September 21, 1997

It was 93 degrees in our Venice Beach backhouse. No breeze from the alley blew through the iron bars to sway the weathered yellow curtains of our bedroom. My girlfriend Tracey and I were leaving that evening for a 10-week trip around the Ring of Fire.

Clothes, boots, and books were everywhere. I kicked back on a sliver of bed as she struggled with the straps, strings, clips, and compartments of her fancy new-fangled backpack.

Elevator music rifted the air asunder from the tarpaper shack across the falling down fence – about eight feet away. Mike, a.k.a. Little Head, who had a little head, which is why they called him that (and all the evidence indicates it was empty), was cranking it up to 10 in more ways than one.

A few days ago we heard him scream at a guy not to make him use the grenade. The guy got in his car. Little Head crashed onto his windshield, suctioned like a starfish, and the guy burned rubber in reverse. Little Head rolled off under our window. We were under the blankets ready for shrapnel, but the grenade never went off. He’s too crazy for the V-13, and if you’re too crazy for one of the world’s most dangerous gangs…

“You came here to destroy people!” his mother yelled, wasted. “You don’t have a mother! I am a mother, and you don’t have a mother!”

“Fuck you!” he yelled. “Shut up!”

Something hit the roof of Little Head’s shack with a thunk. Tracey parted the curtain. The neighbor launched another ice cube from his second-story balcony across the alley. Trouble…

“Go see what’s happening,” Tracey urged me.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“See what’s going on! We might need to call the police.”

I rolled my eyes, but got dressed, tiptoed to the back gate, and peered over.

“I don’t see anything,” I whispered through the side window.

“He’s doing something. Just see what he’s doing.”

I stepped out, reluctantly, to get a better view. So did Little Head. The neighbor evaporated. I was squared off against Little Head like a gunfighter. He glared at me with coal-fired, burn-in-hell beady little rat eyes.

I held up my hands and blurted, “I swear to god I didn’t do it!”

“Your heart is made of stone!” his mother screamed in his ear, “You don’t have any blood in your bones!”

“No,” he tossed off, never taking his eyes off me. “I don’t have any blood in my bones.”

Little Head flexed his fist around a half-full bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. Paralyzed with adrenalin, I wondered what I’d do if he rushed me. Get beat to death with prison fists. Slashed with infected fingernails. Chunks of flesh chomped off me with diseased yellow teeth. His mother shouted slurs at him, spit flying, anybody would’ve lost their mind. Especially if it was tethered by a frayed string.

He seethed.

“I swear to god,” I said.

He flexed.

“It wasn’t me.”

He switched his grip.

That’s when I realized I was barefoot. I couldn’t comprehend him wasting perfectly good Mad Dog, but Little Head swung it back, around, up, and over, letting loose like a major leaguer. The bottle sailed end over end in slow motion spewing ever-widening spirals of nasty juice. It shattered a foot short of me, splattered sticky wine up my legs, and scattered sticky shards of broken glass over my toes, feet, and around a 10-foot area. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to. I wanted to. He was advancing on me. He was going to kill me.

“I did it!” the neighbor blurted out from his patio.

Little Head considered this new prey as a hawk would.

“I called the police too!”

That dropped into Little Head’s equation with a thunk. He strode off as fast as his pride would allow. I breathed again.

“Thank you,” I said to the neighbor with a mix of gratitude and fury.

“I guess I’m a little safer up here,” he said. “He needs to go back to prison.”

I nodded, afraid he might still be listening, and scouted for a move where I wouldn’t get glass embedded in my feet. I’d need my feet a lot in the coming months. In war and travel, one thing you learn is, always take care of your feet.

Tracey poked her head out. “Is he gone?”

“I scared him off.”

“Really?”

“No, the neighbor called the cops and he bolted. Throw me some shoes will ya? And do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Don’t ever ask me to do something this stupid again.”

Back in the bedroom, Tracey’s backpack spewed shoes, sunscreen, a silk cocoon, clothes, toiletries, makeup, a poncho, personal effects, a travel pillow, and an assortment of little plastic travel crap filled with travel crap across the bedroom. Debris mounted. My mom divorced my dad because he was a slob. No point mentioning that now.

“How’s that new backpack treating you, Lula?”

In “Wild at Heart,” Nic Cage tells Laura Dern’s character Lula that she’s hot as Georgia asphalt. Tracey’s hot as Georgia asphalt. I know. I’m from Georgia.

She wiped sweat off her flushed face with the back of her hand and said, “I hate this fucking backpack. Everything I need is always at the bottom.”

She collapsed next to me and says, “Don’t touch me, it’s too hot.”

“You touched me.”

“You were supposed to move.”

“I’m going to stick my head in the ice box.” I did.

“Is it going to be hotter than this?” she called.

“Not in New Zealand, ’bout the same in Sydney, although it’s spring, but hotter in Bali, Thailand, Tahiti, and Fiji, plus or minus ice boxes.”

Drunk on a volatile cocktail of endorphins, naiveté, and love like getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat, I jumped on her. We made love.

Afterward, I wondered if I needed a ring to ask her to marry me. I didn’t know the answer. I did what I always did when I didn’t know the answer. I asked Tracey.

“Do we technically need a ring to get engaged?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Why?”

I pulled her to the side of the bed butt-naked so nothing could come between us, got down on one knee, took her hand, and asked, “Tracey, will you marry me?”

In the afternoon’s golden glow, she was so beautiful and speechless. She looked around the room for meaning, her emerald eyes deep and mysterious.

“What does that mean?”

I had no idea. How can you know what all the years hold? I decided to ignore love’s logic and repeated, “Will you marry me?”

“What does it mean?”

I shrugged. She shrugged. Who could ever know? We giggled.

“Yes!”

Elation, laughter, tears. The world shrank away, I drew an engagement ring on her finger with black magic marker, and to celebrate we ate watermelon in bed. Naked.

They say if you can’t travel with someone, you shouldn’t marry them. We put that theory to the test, and in a couple of hours, I witnessed my first miracle. We arrived at LAX half an hour early. You don’t arrive half an hour early anywhere with Tracey.

I love the international concourse, and what I love the most is the flight board: Milan, Rome, London, Auckland, Melbourne, Paris, Papeete, Sydney, Vancouver, Morelia, Manila, Mexico City, Osaka, Guatemala, Guadalajara, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Honolulu-Bali-Jakarta.

You can go anywhere with enough money, even money you haven’t earned yet, and in a mere 18½ hours you could arrive in say, Bali, or Bali Hai as conjured up by The Golden Age of Travel’s posters and musicals like South Pacific, “Bali Hai, may call you, any night, any day, in your heart you hear it call you, come away, come away, Bali Hai will whisper, on the wind of the sea, am I your special island? Come to me, come to me…”

Starving and afraid of airplane food, Tracey topped up on Sushi Boy. Who knew what disastrous delectables lay in wait upon the tables of her future, so I indulged her last supper. An Indian family of eight made a massive mess. Latinos quietly cursed cleaning it up. What wonders await when worlds collide…

A guy approached two Germans and asked, “Money for the homeless? C’mon, they need it.” They grudgingly handed over a pocketful of change like Rubes fleeced at a cheap carnival sideshow.

At the gate we gawked at our plane. It seemed too big to get off the ground, much less stay in the air 17 hours. We boarded, and in the seats next to us, a Chinese couple choked down little plastic liquor bottles and coughed till their eyes watered. We sparked the curiosity of the Indonesians seated around us instantly, or, the men were curious about Tracey. I stared out the window at the baggage handlers, the conveyor belt, and the mishmash of American and Asian suitcases, overloaded bags, and strained sacks of booty wondering how different the world would look when we landed in Bali. Would even the airport look foreign?

I was obsessed with Asia since at least 12 when I’d stumbled on a Japanese woodblock print in a Philadelphia art gallery. A regal, scowling samurai stands defiant, hand on sword hilt, staring down an impending shit storm symbolized by an ominous dark cloud passing over the full moon like a ghost. I didn’t know anything about the mysterious print except that it broke my bank, read Sadanobu in a script with dignified gravitas, and was so clean and devoid of unnecessary details, it left a lot to the imagination.

For decades I taped it to the walls of dozens of places I lived, filling in the mysterious narrative a thousand ways. Until The Night of Drunken Fury. I was one of the first lovers -- perhaps the first -- dumped by email. Sadanobu faced impending oblivion with dignity and stoic indifference. I vowed not to drink into oblivion on this trip.

“Are you going to take me to paradise?” Tracey asked.

“I certainly hope so,” I said, “maybe a little hell too, for contrast.”

“Hard to avoid these days,” she said. “Especially in the third world.”

I smiled, pulled a dark wisp from her rosebud lips, and tucked it behind her ear. I looked into her deep green eyes and smiled.

“Can we do this forever?” she asked.

“Definitely,” I said.

“Kiss me.”

A lilting song or gibberish I was fairly certain I’d heard in the Star Wars, funky in a bad alien bar way, came over the PA, “Captain dah duh dah dud dad dah…” Couldn’t have been helpful.

We taxied past a Qantas plane that looked as big as New Zealand. Tracey said ours was that size, and I felt the size of it when we gained the speed we needed for liftoff. Like an earthquake, the MP-11 shook and groaned and forced our heads down on takeoff. A stream of mist trailed off from the wing until we climbed above the moisture levels over the beach. Then it was El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach off in the distance, the last of the lights. The edge of the continent. The end of the Western world. We hurtled through the atmosphere at 522 mph, 19,000 feet above a planet whirling around a sun spinning through space, headed a long, long way from home over a vast, mostly empty ocean.

The lights came on, and everyone rushed for the bathrooms. The guy across the aisle took off his shoes and his feet stank so we moved 20 rows up on the other side of the plane. Everyone had already staked their claim and lay down across the middle rows. So many lessons... We wound up sitting by a lecherous man who stared insanely at Tracey, smiled, and ceased to stop for the next 17 hours. Dinner consisted of chicken in brown sauce with cooked carrots and real-life Indonesian pecan pie, just like I had back in Georgia growing up. The Lech looked like a cross between a wino and a wolverine, pausing between feedings to look over and lech. After dinner I caught his eye and asked, “What are you smiling about?”

“I love to watch young people in love,” he said, pausing to savor a succulent forkful of chicken in a gleaming brown sauce.

“Great,” I said, “but stop staring at us.”

He just smiled and slurped all the life out of his chicken bone. The guy in front of us put his seat back crushing me and my soul so I thought I’d go back to my seat. I asked Tracey if she’d be alright, she said Lech was harmless, she was used to “The Stare.” I always thought these old guys were molesters, but they couldn’t hurt her now, so I went back and kicked a guy out of my seat and ordered a Bintang, Indonesian beer, my first taste of “International Quality.” The writing on the can read, “Bintang is brewed exclusively from premium quality ingredients: Malt, hops, and water, making this beer one of the finest in the world.” I looked forward to more formaldehyde.

Over dinner we discussed plans for New Year’s Eve at the end of the Millennium. I was thinking mushrooms in the desert, or atop an African mountain. Or maybe reveling on a tropical island with decadent friends.

She said, “I’d like to spend it having a romantic evening with you.”

“I’d be honored,” I said.

Before we got to Hawaii, I learned Indonesian for “Life Vest Is Under Your Seat,” “Do Not Put Waste Down Toilet,” and most importantly, “Flush,” a persistent theme running right around the world and down its pants leg, uniting us all with a fury too murky to belabor.

Forever dawned on a new day, which was the same day by the time we reached Hawaii. We had a hot, sticky interlude at Honolulu International near where Captain Cook was cooked.

By 1779, Cook had navigated the globe three times. His namesakes include Cook, Cooktown, Cook Rock, Cook River, Cook’s Bay, Cooks Anchorage, Cook Channel, Cooks Brook, Mount Cook, Cook Mountains, Cook Strait, Cook Island, Cook Islands, Cook Inlet, Cook Outlet, Cook Peninsula, Cook County, Cook Glacier, and his son James. His voyages ended abruptly when he tried to abduct the King of Hawai’i.

Tracey noticed two dirty young travelers with straw mats and matching crappy woven bags striking up a conversation and said, “Look, dirty people are making friends.” I shushed her. “What? They can’t hear me.”

“People can hear through the holes in the sides of their heads.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yes, we do,” the guy said.

Tracey shrugged off his glare, and we boarded, giddy as kids with only 11 hours and 22 minutes ‘til Christmas morning. On liftoff, the plane bitched and moaned and threatened to collapse under its own weight but hurled us into space. Only 6,246 miles to go, according to the screen on the back of the chair in front of me. It would inch centimeter by centimeter every mile of the way. The world is just that big. And some people’s feet stink just as much.

September 22

Darkness followed us around the Earth an entire day. Tracey moved, and I slept a few hours in the fetal position. Our friends in L.A. had lunch, dinner, a comfy bed, breakfast, and their butts were back in their seats at work Monday morning by the time dawn bleached the black sky navy, lapis, and sapphire over the South Pacific. Atomic white blasted the horizon and flooded friendly sounding places like Bougainville Island, New Britain, and Bismarck Sea. Eruptions of altocumulus spewed from islands of stratus clouds far below.

Farther below, first light illuminated 16,000-foot Puncak Jayawijaya erupting out of the second biggest island in the world, Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya. Saronged in jade, India, and emerald, its jungles hid secrets, like the bones of Michael Rockefeller, heir to one of the world’s greatest fortunes.

He loved these people, recorded them on trips from Harvard, and bought their spirit totems for hooks, lines, and sinkers. These bisjs became the foundation of MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He returned, shipwrecked, and fell into the wrong hands. In 2014’s “Savage Harvest,” Carl Hoffman describes what happened to Michael in painful detail.

Breakfast carts rumbled distantly in the cabin. A long wafting whiff, fingers, tendrils, ticklied unconscious olfactory senses. A zombie army arose around bacon’s rally cry. Tracey plopped down, refreshed.

“Whatcha doing?”

I held up the SkyMall. She said the Indonesian lady she sat next to told her all about herself. She was traveling with her husband. She had been to Kansas for some sort of training and was returning home to Jakarta. The Lonely Planet guide said Indonesians will ask questions of a personal nature upon meeting you. It’s impolite not to return the compliment.

After crab wrappers, asparagus, and croissants, I took the first sip of Tracey’s coffee because she didn’t like it. As I lifted my arm, a passing stewardess trucking by knocked it and sent the hot, sticky coffee onto my thigh and down Tracey’s leg, and her calf, down to her foot and between her toes. I went and washed, but she said it would take a shower. She liked the crepe. I was surprised.

“You know, I think I’m the pickiest eater on the entire planet.”

“I don’t care so long as you admit it. So we can talk about it and laugh about it. If you denied it, I think it could be a bone of contention.”

“I can’t help it, I just am.”

“I think I’ll be following you into a lot of restaurants.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Tuesday, 5:36 a.m. We left Sunday night. Not only had our friends had lunch in L.A., they were about to get off work, and we’d jumped a whole day ahead.

I resolved to set about learning the language from the guidebook, starting with small talk and, moving up to asking for a quiet room with private bath, air-con, hot tub, and tropical drinks with little umbrellas. But instead all I managed to learn was that the word “Indonesia” probably derives from “Indos Nesos,” or “Indian Islands,” from an ancient local language. Situated between India and China, Indonesia has been a crossroads for travelers for who knows how many thousands of years. Bronze Age artifacts have been found on Java, which became a trading powerhouse controlled alternately between the warring Buddhist Sailendras and Hindu Sanjayas since at least the Eighth century.

Brahma, the God of Creation, Central Java, Indonesia, 9th century volcanic stone sculpture

Two hours later, my first sight of Indonesia was a volcano rising dramatically up out of the ocean, its crater big enough to swallow a city. It pierced the misty clouds, seemingly rising up to a point right off the wing tip of the wing.

I saw a second volcano, one of over 200 Indonesian volcanoes, 80 active along 16,000–plus islands in an archipelago stretching 3,200 thirty-two hundred miles or one- eighth of the world’s surface. If you superimposed Indonesia over America, it’d stretch from Washington State to the Caribbean. Over Europe, it’d stretch from Ireland to the Caspian Sea. It’s got the second and third largest islands in the world (behind Greenland), New Guinea and Borneo. Other major islands like Sumatra and Sulawesi are bigger than Sweden and Great Britain so size is relative. Java, on the other hand, is the size of California and has 100 million people, some relocated with mixed success.

We flew over Bali’s smoldering volcano, Gunung Agung, withemerald Lake Batur in its lap. “Mother Mountain” last blew in 1963, assuring the Balinese the gods were angry. If they were angry then, they were livid in 1883 when Mount Krakatoa exploded with a force of several hydrogen bombs killing 36,000 people on Java and a percussion they heard as far away as Sydney, with tidal waves recorded in England on the other side of the world. But they must’ve been really, really ticked off in 1885 when the largest recorded eruption ever blew out of Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, killing 90,000 and sending enough ash into the air to make 1816 the “year without summer.”

We descended over rice fields –- curvaceous, intricate, interlaced, watery webbed terraces – and black beaches caressed by patient waves until they wore away, the blessing and the curse of an eternity of affection. The plane descends toward water. We’re close enough to see an outrigger canoe with a fisherman letting line out by hand. Coming into Denpasar, white houses with clay-tiled roofs sprawled for miles. Boom! We hit the ground, wheels skidding, streaks of palm trees. It looked humid out there. It looked exotic in every way – buildings, cars, and especially people.

Asia...

Dalia, Tracey’s friend from Austin, picked us up at the airport.

“Looking great,” Tracey said. Hugs and kisses. We climbed into her ’45 Army Jeep and set sail through the narrow Denpasar streets.

“All this is new,” she said. “None of it was here a year ago, not McDonald’s, KFC, now there’s even a Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“I love doughnuts!” I said.

First Malaysians, then Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, British, Dutch again, and now McDonald’s. But before McDonald’s Man, there was Java Man, the ancestor of the folks who lived around here 1.7 million years ago. Also known as homo erectus, these guys had low foreheads. If you made fun of them, they could deploy a flaked ax. Modern folks, homo sapiens, are known to have lived in the area 40,000 years ago, and up until about 5,000 B.C. They were Australoids conquered by Mongols and today they’re called Negritos and only survive in isolated pockets of Southeast Asia and the Philippines. I never saw one that I knew of and could only imagine they looked like Aborigines. Maybe the hordes sweeping off nearby main land China swept over Oceana. Everybody likes to get away.

What we thought was a Walkman turned out to be Dalia’s cell phone. She started firing staccato business deals, “I want to take care of this now, I want to handle this with you. There are too many people involved.”

She was a strikingly beautiful, self-made woman whose lucrative business, Milk, consisted of designing high-end jewelry handcrafted by local artists in Bali and exported to U.S. eco-friendly stores. She drove through the busy streets of balmy Kuta turning heads with her exotic, quixotic beauty. Her drop-dead gorgeousness happened to be matched by her sharp intellect and shrewd instincts, possibly even flare for danger. Like hitting people with her Jeep. She needed a Jeep to drive that fast and recklessly.

It was only 8:30 a.m. and the heat and humidity were already breaking records in the indices of history. Moped drivers rarely stopped before they turned onto a road, making every intersection a thrilling brush with death. The code was to honk to pass whoever was in front of you. The only other rule was to do what you had to do to get where you were going. Construction everywhere, men working. Small brown statues sat smiling on pedestals, some with flower offerings and others with cigs in their mouths.

Dalia had an exceptional traditional Balinese two-story home; thatch roof, open air, hardwood beams, stone floors, and a big bedroom upstairs that looked out across the surrounding fields. A man’s handmade broom woosh-wooshed on the path in the yard, women leaned over a large rectangular table crafting intricate jewelry, and a hammock swung in the wind on the patio. I wanted her life.

September 23

We awoke early and showered. The servants made coffee. I certainly never had servants before and couldn’t help feeling colonial. As fate would have it, Dalia had another freeloader, her one-time attorney, Mimi the Horseface Lawyer who wanted to buy Polo shirts to sell back in Dallas. She never stopped yammering. I never saw her breath once.

We picked up Australian Ian – Dalia’s off again boyfriend. He had a dog named Raja, who smiled like a dog in Monument Valley I knew named Raja, befuddling, if not excellent evidence for reincarnation. Ian’s Raja is quite sweet, fully proving reincarnation. He’s also a lot nicer than Ian who reminds me of Rod Stewart aging, behaving, and smelling badly of Eau de Arrogance. We were taking Raja to the dog chiropractor and then to the mud baths because his nose was dry and his balls were itchy.

Lula in front of the pool Ian later electrocuted himself to death in.

On the drive to Ubud, Ian told us Indonesians have no sense of anticipation. Then he ran out of gas. Dalia got the Jeep started much to his consternation – then drove darting with the pedal to the metal. Real metal.

“You’re a swan on speed,” he said.

“Indonesian psychologists have noted,” he said, “they have no sense of anticipation. They’ll watch as you back over them. They also have no problem-solving skills. They’re given linear steps to follow in school, A, B, C, D, E, but they’re not taught problem solving.”

“They have no problems,” Tracey said deadpan.

“They bloody well do. They have all the problems everyone else has. They need to feed themselves, they have plenty of problems.”

I blame it on the Dutch.

Rice paddies on the road to Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

It was on that drive that Tracey decided we would forsake American life and move to Bali. I loved her spontaneity. Then she said we would go to Italy where I’d teach for a year. It’d be her opportunity to learn a foreign language. Then we would fly back to the States to have a baby, and leave again. Great in theory...

Our problem solvers ran out of gas three times on the way to Ubud. The first time they refilled from a can, the second time we rolled into a gas station, and the third was on the street in Ubud, and Ian walked to the gas station with the can.

Horseface needed oats. She knew where to get them. She knew everything. She knew where to buy Polo shirts and how to fleece her friends for $52 per shirt.

I took pictures of statues and masks – which are light and cheap and ward off evil spirits. We’ve had tons of evil spirits this year. And rats. I don’t know what’s up with that, but the pictures should help.

I sat in the whirlpool of the spa thinking back on our second day. It was enough to convince us we were in paradise and that we had to move here for a year. They would make coffee for me in the morning, Tracey said, and do our laundry, and sweep the lawn with a broom she made by hand.

Dr. James Taylor, a chiropractor from California, had cracked my back for the first time in my life. Said I had a minor case of scoliosis and one leg was an inch longer than the other because it had pivoted somehow someway somewhere. And he cracked my neck, sweet whiplash. He could tell by looking at me I had needed it for a long time. I told him I drove 25,000 miles a summer. He said he could’ve guessed. I probably took better care of my car than my back he said, even though it needs more care. He gave us the full tour after the mud bath, herb baths, sauna, and massage looking out onto a river in the jungle. Sign me up, I said. Mimi the Mooch took off, and as Ian taught me how to tie a sarong in the men’s room, he told me Mimi was a right pain in the arse. She always needed something, didn’t give Dalia a moment’s rest, and a bunch more shit. We weren’t an inconvenience at all, he said. We just wanted a lift and a massage since Dalia and Ian were heading to the spa already.

The massage was from a kid named Wayan. I learned everyone seemed to be named Wayan. The guy massaged just about everything and rubbed one leg nearly forever, then the other. I liked the feet best, and rubbing between my toes, where I had athlete’s foot. The sun reflected off the river onto the bamboo roof. Three butterflies played chase through the dense jungle over the stream.

Here I was, 28, in love, well traveled, educated, in the South Pacific, it was only Day 2, and Wayan was working his ass off on my back. Then after one-and-a-half hours, front and back, he scrubbed me with mud and sat me in a deep tub full of flowers and washed the mud off me. In my whole life I was never so pampered. It was odd to have someone wash flower petals off you. It’s odd having anyone pamper you at all. I lay there wondering what I’d done to deserve it. Tracey found God and felt vindicated.

Rather than quest and quibble we took a room at the very first place we came to, Kejang Thingamabob. We were led through an archway by a grandmother whose watermelon breasts I could see under her sarong. She pointed to the girl we were to follow through a stream of mazes between family rooms and walls and guest rooms, down stairs, to an open area with a lotus pond, an island with grinning, devilish frog statues and Elephant Ears. Flowers bloomed in pink and red and white petals, and yellow-hearted lotuses bloomed from beneath the chalky green water of the pond. Tracey and I looked at each other and smiled. Hundreds of plants I couldn’t name lined every wall and pool and pond. You could hear the babbling brook but not see it through the dense green. The other side of the valley cradled terraced rice fields. That night we fell asleep to a cacophony of frog orchestration, a amphibian lullaby.

Finally, at Casa Luna, I had Balinese food for the first time. I’d had ricotta hotcakes, calamari, gnocchi, and French pastries, Italian coffee, and Dutch beer, but the chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce had been delivered by the immortals.

An American couple joined us on the open terrace, Karen and Tim Halouson, of Saipan. They’d met in Minnesota and had been together for 12 years. They were 30, strong and fit. He had long blond hair pulled up in a ponytail. They’d lived in Colorado where she taught 4th grade. They took the job in Saipan, a small island, 4 by 12 miles, near Guam and nothing much else, knowing nothing about it, because he had, essentially, no qualifications. He described himself as the ball on the end of the chain, her chain having a master’s in education.

“I would stay right here in Bali,” she said, “if someone offered me a job.”

Tim said their students were characters in a movie they watched every day. They can’t expect them to go home and do three pages of math for homework, or any at all, with 20 people living in a room.

Back at the spa, Tracey had a massage, exfoliation, and bath in which her hair, body, and breasts were hand-washed. Then she got a treatment with a Neuro-Emotional Technique from Reverend Doctor James Taylor, formerly of the Eselen Institute of Big Sur, California, a psychologist (Ph.D.), and a reverend of the non-denominational, non- sectarian Universalist Church. Jim, as he asked us to call him, had her lie down and hold out her arm. He asked her if she was Tracey. He pushed down on her arm and it held. He asked her if she was Hillary Clinton and her arm gave way. He asked her to come up with a positive affirmation. She said she wanted to be free and to love and be loved. Her arm gave way each time. He said this was because she didn’t believe she deserved to feel free or loved. So he decided to go back into her past. He brought her into the pain of feeling shitty from what her childhood had done to her. He hammered on the pressure points around her body where she stored pain memories with a little hammer that went clack-clack.

“What will that do?” she asked, “the next time I think about that?”

He said he couldn’t erase the entirety of the pain, the years of associative hurt, or all the pain related in various web-like ways, but he could begin her on her way to heal.

September 24

In bed about 6 a.m., we were talking. She said she wanted me to do it, she would even pay for it. We both knew full well I carried considerable anger towards various people in her past, to the point where it could consume me. I told her that love has also opened up a lot of things for me, that my primary example hasn’t been the most functional. When you see someone tumble in the avalanche in front of you, you’re very careful every step you take. One wrong step can bring the whole thing down. Sometimes I felt like our relationship was perfect, sometimes I felt like one wrong step could bring the whole thing down. I usually saw things as black or white.

“It’s all gray,” Tracey said.

“And we won’t push each other away.”

“Never,” I said.

At Kajing Cottages, I tried to bargain for a room with the girl as a matter of pride, not money.

“Twenty-seven thousand.”

“Fifteen,” I said.

“No.”

“Twenty.”

“No,” she said. “Hot water, 27.”

“Without hot water? Can we see?”

She led us up. Shoes rested in front of doors, shirts lounged over chairs.

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

“Is that okay with you Trace?”

“Whatever.”

“Okay.”

“No rooms,” she said. “All taken.”

“Then why tell us?”

“Maybe tomorrow.” That’s anticipation.

We settled on a room downstairs with hot water, which we liked, except it had no frivolities such as toilet paper or towels adorning the bathroom. We moved the next day, next door, to Gerti’s.

“I know I’m picky,” Tracey said, as we entered Casa Luna for breakfast, where we had also eaten an excellent dinner. “I can’t help it if my stomach’s sensitive.”

“Your stomach tells you what’s good for you,” I said, “so it’s doing a good job.” They’d find three diabolic parasites in her guts when we got home.

Coffee is reason enough to live. I sing its addictive praises a thousand times a morning, my excitement the night before making it difficult to sleep. It would take me a whole hell of a lot of support groups to get me back to one cup a day, and if I had to kick it, I’d curl up in the fetal position, in some mint-green room in a cold “home” for people who can’t quite handle life on the outside without coffee.

When I rented the motorcycle after breakfast all jacked up on coffee, Tracey asked, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” It had started with putting on sun block in the shade of a shop that had bicycles. Things tend to escalate.

“Have a moped?” I asked Wayan, “You know, vroom-vroom,” as we slathered on bug screen.

“My friend does,” he waved down the street, arm up, wrist down, fingers splayed, which doubled as his Elton John impersonation. The guy in the yellow shirt came running across the hectic street, horns blaring, all smiles, and showed us a motorcycle.

“Alright,” I said, “How much?”

“Fifteen thousand. All day. Eight thousand, three hours.”

“Okay, deal. Fuel?”

“You bring back half-full.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He showed me how to lock it up.

“How many gears?”

“Five.”

“One down?”

“One down, four up.”

“Okay, I can drive this thing.”

Tracey looked like she was imagining hot tarmac peeling the flesh off her legs.

“I’m going to take a trial run around the block,” I said, “alone.”

“That’s a fabulous idea” she said.

I puttered down Monkey Forest Road feeling pretty good, took a left, and as the road dipped and meandered I had the sensation of controlling a rollercoaster up a hill, sharp left, and into the traffic of Jalan Raya, Main Street, Ubud, where things took a nasty turn. The festival on Friday meant the market had swollen to festival proportions, and scooters lined up to pass cars which at any moment could attempt a turn in any direction with no indication up to, but not exceeding, 360 degrees. Sometimes inches, sometimes centimeters, I squeaked through, waited, darted assertively until, with a sigh of relief, I made it back to the shop.

Wayan made me sign papers. Over the contract we finally negotiated all day (till 6 p.m.), insurance, fuel included, 13,000. What a deal. If you live. The helmets Wayan gave us were weaker than the ones my G.I. Joes action figures wore. As far as her helmet was concerned, Tracey was more concerned with not looking like my retarded sister everyone should feel sorry for. As I mounted my mighty 50cc steed, a little voice said, “Don’t do this, you’re both wearing shorts, some taxi is going to knock you over and your bones will be protruding through your skin, you don’t even want to see the inside of a Balinese hospital, or have to get airlifted to Australia like some of the horror stories you heard.” But I’ve made a living out of not trusting my instincts, so we zoomed off. As I pulled away, I shouted to Tracey over my shoulder, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes! I’m sure I don’t!”

I turned around, pulled up to the shop, took off my “helmet,” and told Wayan, “This is crazy.” He looked worried that I might back out.

“Not so bad,” he said, “only in town, around the market.”

Hating to hit any local’s pocketbook when I would have years to pay off these credit cards, I said, “Okay.” Plus, that whole man thing...

“Hold on tight,” I told her. “Tighter.”

As we started down the street she gasped whenever someone braked suddenly, turned with no blinker, or pulled in front of us. Her helmet kept falling down.

A quarter mile down the road we made it to the Monkey Forest. She climbed off and flashed the cabbies waiting in the shade for that very thing. I parked.

“We should’ve taken a taxi,” she said.

“It would’ve cost more,” I said.

“What? Fifty cents?”

Old Man of the Monkey Forest, Ubud, Bali

One of the monkeys looked like my dad Larry, big belly and a beard, sitting back in the shade, smiling, lazy, Mother Nature’s tribute to the conservation of energy. Tracey bought bananas, which apparently monkeys like, and potatoes. A young one about half a foot high took a shine to her. She loved to watch them peel bananas – the opposable thumb thing does impress. Their little fingers are so adept. You don’t have to tell a monkey how to eat a banana. Or steal one. Or climb in your hair and take a shit.

Bali, Ubud, Monkey Forest, Tracey and monkey 2.jpg

Bali, Ubud, Monkey Forest, Tracey and Monkey.jpg

There was a temple too with statues of a two-headed snake lady, a centipede, and a giant masturbating monkey (which apparently because of their opposable thumbs they’re very adept at as well). We wandered toward the woodcarving museum, which we never stepped into because there were too many wood carvers blocking the way. Dolphins, komodo dragons, fish, Buddha, yogis, every species came with its own specialist. I think the area was called Buyshit. We found a café that was more like a temple -- manicured lawns with water gardens, statues, rows of wheat fields surrounding the park compound, kites in the wind. Wood chimes heralded South Pacific currents.

“What did we do to deserve this?” Tracey wondered aloud.

“Didn’t give a shit about a car, house, whatever, we just up and did it. That’s what we did to deserve it.”

The waitress’s name was Wayan Kadek, and she had two more names. She came from far away, she said, Denpasar. Yes, very far, nearly 30 miles. She taught us Indonesian.

“My name is” is, “Ini nota terina kasil.”

Easy, right? How about, Me llamo es…?

I asked her, “How do you say, ‘I want the check please?’”

She said it, but didn’t get the idea I wanted the check, just the idea that I wanted to learn how to say I want the check, until we headed for the door.

“What are these?” she asked.

“Potatoes,” I said, “for the monkeys.”

“Potatoes for the monkeys,” she repeated, and laughed. Always laughing, these people.

After lunch, I couldn’t get the motorcycle started. An Ozzie found the kill switch and choke for me. As we whizzed down the winding road in dappled sunlight narrowly missing blaring trucks, honking taxis, and multi-generational mopeds, I couldn’t help be distracted by our violent language. Why must we kill the switch? And choke the throttle? For similar reasons, I couldn’t find the Elephant Cave and got lost (which I never would’ve admitted to Tracey or had to). It was the scenic route, and it improved the overall experience of the entire 10-week journey thoroughly. I was lucky to have discovered The Village of the Stone Carvers after Tracey pointed it out, made me stop, and forced me to quit bitching.

Whereas other villages had been The Village of Wood Carvers, The Village of Batik Makers, The Masked Bandits of The Village of Mask Makers, The Village of Shadow Puppet Masters, this village was devoted to chipping and sanding and polishing blocks of stone, limestone, white stone, black stone, volcanic stone, sculpting reclining Ganesh and Buddha, standing Ganesh and Buddha, sitting Ganesh and Buddha, fat laughing Buddha, head of serious Buddha on a pedestal, praying Buddha, head on knee pensive Buddha, Ganesh chilling after a big meal, Ganesh on the Throne, Ganesh with his trunk up, down, sideways, drinking from a bowl conveniently, scary demons honed with loving detail and flickering tongues, manic monkeys, moody monkeys, happy monkeys, rabbits climbing all over other in a tower, turtles with turtles on their backs, frogs giving you a sideways glance like whatcha doing here, stone lamps that would’ve cast a glow of hypnotic candlelight around our jasmine and garbage scented yard, as well as bas reliefs of Ganesh, four-armed Buddha, and entire histories unfolding in exquisitely etched deities, demons, and mythical creatures entwined in vines, lotus leaves, and flowers, sculpted as smooth as stones by the holy water that flowed through this ancient valley, the home of fallen empires for thousands of years, the emerald heart of The Island of the Gods. Ubud. Heartbeat.

The two holy rivers that have made this valley a mecca for kings and craftsmen and Chinese tradesmen who brought the startling knowledge of terraced rice paddies, the Pekrisan River and the Petanu, flow from the same source high on the side of fuming Gunung Batur, Pura Tirta Empul, a spring surrounded by ghostly shrines carved deep in stone cliffs for princes and priests.

There’s a tale engraved on an old stone vase in Pura Penataran Sasih, The Temple of The Cosmic Navel, which describes gods and demons roiling the ocean, creating Amrita, pussy squirt juice, the elixir of life. It’s no wonder they call their religion Agama Tirta, the religion of the sticky waters. Maybe it’s the source of the two religions that flow through the land that so many wars have been fought over. Maybe Sanghyang Widi, the Supreme Being who’s unseen, never mentioned, beyond Brahma the creator, Shiva the destroyer, Vishnu the preserver, Buddha the enlightened, and Ganesh the elephant man, is The Source. Of All This Bullshit. I respect anyone who can get something for nothing.

Or maybe the mysteries of this island where everyone’s an artist and every act devout, spring from the pantheon of gods, spirits, and entities that drifted on the wind, whispered in the trees, and sang in the streams long before anyone came along to name them.

“Did one person do all these?” Lula asked the shopkeeper. He shook his head and swept his arm around, a woman walked by looked over her should with dust on her cheek, women worked everywhere now that I noticed, and children scooted in and under and around the statuary, into and out of the back. “You know what,” Lula said, looking around at the other canvas and tarpaulin roadside stands and shops on the street, “You’d look at these and think, oh, that must be a gifted carver. Not everyone can do that. That’s a special gift. An artist’s gift. Well, the fact is, everyone can. From the moment that they’re two years old they give ‘em a little pick and a rock and they go at it, and they’re just expected to be able to do it, and therefore they can.”

“It’s the stone carving village.”

“Yeah, but, my point is, it illuminates something about artistic talent in general, it can be taught, learned, it’s not just this gift that’s bestowed on certain people.”

“Have you heard me sing?”

She rolled her eyes. “You were cursed, that’s different. God shit down your throat.”

Since we couldn’t chuck a 1,600-pound turtle with baby turtles on its back on Tracey’s back on the back of the moped, we took off. After three hard-pedaling failures to achieve breakthrough velocity, I finally started the moped (more ped than machine, noped, Rocinante), our trustworthy steed thrust forward, about a click later we turned the corner, and pulled into the Goa Gajah parking lot. You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting something holy. A lot of people do it. We cruised past the gift shops, gift stands, and gifted the parking lot attendant a 1,500 gift, a real rupe off. We parked between two tour buses because nothing could not not be between two tour buses minimum.

As soon as you stopped moving you started pouring sweat. We walked to the edge and on the other side of a sunken square baked golden brown, there it was. The gaping maw of a tortured demon -- the Elephant Cave -- sculpted out of a rocky hillside. No elephants.

We descended the stairs and crossed the courtyard with a herd of international go-getters and their loved ones who didn’t sign up for this. A hot wind licked us with the pitiful breath of a dying man. Upon closer inspection, still no elephants. But it had withstood the ravages of sun and wind and rain for over a thousand years. Political and religious wars and foreign occupations and volcanic eruptions and buses of nematodes.

Upheaval in the Indus River Valley 5,000 plus miles away and years ago set off a chain reaction that sent shock waves across cultures, continents, and oceans that had rippled here and far beyond. The Rig-Veda the Aryans of ancient Persia imposed on the indigenous Indus Valley inhabitants (if anyone is indigenous to anywhere) spread across India and beyond, changing the nature of the way they thought about higher forces and themselves. The pantheon required ritual, sacrifice, and outward displays of devotion. The backlash of the Vedanta, or end of the Vedas, brought tectonic paradigm shifts that turned their intellectual architecture outside in, sending seekers within. Hinduism is as elusive and infinite as Indra’s web, but the concept of Brahma, the creator, the divine force which animates, sustains, and is beyond all comprehension, had a profound effect on at least one young man, Siddhartha Guatama, who suffered many travails before finding enlightenment under the Banyan tree, not unlike the ones growing all around here, their long roots reaching out like fingers that never stop searching.

Entering the belly of the beast was less Melvillean and more shoving past a lady hell-bent on selling me a warm can of Coke. She doubled down with a very dirty nasty greasy sarong for 1,500 rupiah. I snarled. My lip recoiled. I couldn’t help it, pure instinct. She gestured that were we to pass her threshold some sort of rain would destroy our heads.

While I was trying to tease this out, she ushered me out of the way for 30 people stuffing the beast’s face. Every one of them got the sarong memo.

“That sarong,” she said.

“That is so wrong,” I agreed.

She pointed to a restaurant on the hilltop and gave the universal rubbing thumb and forefinger sign for mucho baksheesh. Or, she held up the sarong again with a big smile that flaunted the ineptitude of her hygienist, her dirty thing.

“I don't know,” I said to Lula.

The lady tossed it at Lula who jumped. She picked it up and shoved it in Lula’s hand, grabbed another one, shoved it in my hand and held up her hands. There would be no more debate. And here’s a warm Coke.

I’m not making fun. Everyone always speaks far more of my language than I do of theirs, and their sign language is better for sure, although I suspect it’s not official sign language. They bargain and berate better too. They remain calm, assess my charades, look at me like I’m an idiot, and swiftly present that which I’ve been gesticulating and pointing at in my phrase book, which never has the vowels sounds correctly annotated, and the consonants misconstrue pronunciation of the language as she’s spoken in situ. The letters also aren’t in the right order and don’t refer to actions or objects in the world. These typos seem like they’d be fairly minor, but they’re actually devastating in their consequences. When you ask for a bike and get a banana with what’s apparently perceived as rude thrusting, angry threats can ensue and you can get chased out of museums in Istanbul. It could happen.

Grandma shoved the warm Coke at me again and looked quizzical.

“The old upsell, eh?”

She smiled.

“Brilliant. No.”

She scowled. Crossed her arms. Tapped her foot. This may compromise my leverage, impacting negotiations. I saw my reflection in her eyes. Another foreign pig… and so what? There had been waves of them. Homo erectus, aka Java Man, grunted at the tidal wave of Solo Man who didn’t have the numbers to repel the tsunami of Homo sapiens, aka Australoids, who were then either absorbed (raped, murdered) or driven off the island and/or into the hinterlands (using rape, murder) by other Asian peoples, possibly of Mongolian origin. Neolithic Indonesians were seafaring Austronesians, with stylistic Oceanic influence as evident on ancient pottery, bronze, megaliths, and stone statues like the ones in Sumatra of men riding and wrestling critters. Tribes described by some as primitive still use nautical motifs on their clothes and homes, still make megaliths for tombs in Nias and Sumba, and they still sail outriggers across the vast swath of Oceania.

Indonesians were always nautical traders, which is how Chinese and Indian cultures had such powerful influence. Royal decrees written on stones in Indian pallawa script before Jesus was born were unearthed on Java and Kalimantan. People in ancient Chinese clothes depicted on a bronze drum were discovered near Sumbawa. The Chinese-influenced Dong Son bronze culture with its exquisitely complex geometric designs can be traced from Thailand to New Guinea in the form of ancient casting stones and Han texts that mention eastern Indonesian clove islands. The same culture that created the sophisticated cosmology, literature, and architecture of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat birthed Java’s Borobudur. The archipelago wasn’t a barbaric backwater, it was a cosmopolitan crossroad in the epicenter of the ancient world.

Hinduism and Buddhism competed for the hearts and minds of Asia, but the early record of the Indos Nesos or Indian Islands is hazy. Indonesians embraced one or the other, both, or neither because those are the only choices. Initially Indonesians warmed to whoever had the most power on the mainland to ensure a strong strategic alliance. Of primary concern was the Malacca Strait, the most crucial Southeast Asian maritime trade route between Sumatra and today’s Malaysia. From about the Fifth to Seventh Centuries, Hindus of Java supported by the predominant mainland powers controlled the strait, then the Buddhist kingdom on the Malaysian peninsula came to power and ruled the Malacca and Sunda Straits on either side for 600 years.

This gave rival royal families in Indonesia plenty of time to seethe. Power bounced back and forth, the battle for hearts and minds triggered an arms race in temple building, as well as interfamily intrigue, exile, and bloody civil wars. That’s how Bali alternately came to be home to exiled royal Hindu and Buddhist families whose fusion of art, architecture, genetics, and religion that was gawking at me over its gaping maw right in front of me. The caves were carved in turn by Hindus and Buddhists, and the fusion was most obvious in Ganesh juxtaposed with Buddha, or the other way around, depending on your perspective. Finally, in the Fifteenth Century, the Hindu-Balinese royalty were driven out of Java altogether. They sought refuge here, a fantastic place for it.

A nation divided is a nation you can conquer, and Islam was the opportunist that crept in just as its predecessors had. First on tiptoe, then economic advantage, and finally hostile takeover. Although the official story is that the sweet sound of gamelan music and mesmerizing shadow puppetry won over the natives. Stranger things have happened.

Things like Cornelis de Houtman. Unfit for command, he was blown off course by the perfect storm of idiocy, arrogance, and inheritance. His four small ships landed on Java, men diseased and half-dead. The Dutchmen remedied that by getting drunk and run out of town. They cruised the coastline unwelcome most everywhere, and mutiny was in the air. When they hit Bali, Houtman’s men evaporated. It took the nincompoop Cornelis months to round up enough men to head home where he landed two years later with a fraction of the crew he left with and the handful of spices that would change the world.

The Dutch fucked up Indonesia for 450 years. There were brief interludes like the ineptitude of running a slave monopoly into the ground. That resulted in the bankruptcy of the Dutch East Indies Company, the subsequent but brief rule by the English, and the return of Indonesia to wood shoe wearing Holland following their assistance in a small matter with Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

In addition to their fortunes amassed from coffee, copra, indigo, palm oil, quinine, sugar, plethora of spices, and tea, in 1883 a Dutchman escaped a storm in a Sumatran’s home. Asked what made his lantern glow so bright, he inadvertently created the Royal Dutch Shell Company with the discovery of the fifth largest oil reserves in the world. They dug dikes and built hash bars in The Netherlands while Balinese royal families committed suicide by gunfire in 1894, 1906, and 1908.

World War II brought a brief reprieve from Dutch enslavement with Japanese enslavement, and on August 17th, 1945 Indonesia declared independence. Don’t think so, the Dutch said, and held on until the UN kicked their asses out of the country in 1950. They petulantly double-crossed on New Guinea, saying it wasn’t in the deal, but Mom and Dad at the UN said, “all of it,” so they ceded back the western half. Portugal packed its bags and fled East Timor in 1975 and Indonesia finally celebrated complete independence from foreign pigs once and for all.

Except for busloads that arrived by the dozens, unloaded tourists by the hundreds, and dropped gods know how many thousands of rupiahs into Grandma’s hands. After all, Ganesh provides for the faithful on a cash basis. He does some other things too, wisdom, literature, and photo ops for 3,000 rupiahs, so that’s cool, but putting your money where your mouth is, and judging by her position of power, control, and location, location, location (demon-front property), the fallibility of her faith is unquestionable.

When I thought of it in that light, I happily pulled out a 5,000 rupiah note, put it in her wrinkly palm, and slipped into a sarong and entered this holy cave where saints and slaves and royal exiles had trod with reverence upon the tongue of Dan for millennia. Poor Dan.

I had to move my hands to keep her from putting the Coke in them while I tugged Tracey by the hand. We entered the dank sanctuary of the gods. Poor gods. It’s a hot, humid, wet, wan hole. What a dismal sanctuary. Too bad it took priests hundreds of years to carve it out, leaving rock hard depictions of the most ultimately masculine of energies, lingam, on the walls with counterparts in equal measure symbolized by that most lovely, beloved of feminine holy energy, yoni, or as Tracey likes to say, the power of the P. The crumbling cocks symbolized Shiva the destroyer, which I guess is true when you stop to consider what pregnancy does, and the yoni represented Parvati, Shiva’s wife. They’re the proud parents of the fortunate boy with the unfortunate party trick. He could slice off his head, or more conveniently have someone else slice off his head, when they had friends or family over, dinner parties, that kind of thing, and you could usually stick it right back on.

That was the Golden Age of the Party Trick. Well, things didn't always turn out so well for ol’ Ganesh. This did it this one time and his butler tossed his noggin’ in the river. Seems to me a head is a thing you don’t toss in a river. Especially if it’s your boss’s kid’s and your boss is The Destroyer. I never followed the footnote as to what happened to the butler, a real tosser and serious party pooper, but what I did scour ancient texts in the original vernacular so I could ensure inaccurate and sloppy mistranslation did not contribute to the algorithm of uncertainty in my discernment of truth, is that there is an uncompromising peace of mind that comes with a posteriori veracity, akin to orgasm, and in fact, my research paid off. Somebody grabs an elephant head, they keep one in a trunk or whatever, and sticks it on the kid’s neck. What kind of a fucking fool would go and do a goddamn thing like that I wonder? It’d be like telling Tony Soprano you chopped off Little Anthony's head and tossed it in the river, but the good news is, you picked up a head at the Brooklyn Zoo. How ‘bouts we stick this elephant head on Little Ganesh, Mr. Destroyer?

I had to use the bathroom so I don't know what happened to the butler, but Ganesh here, he has a great attitude. Commendable given the head trauma. When you consider everything he's been through -- violent dad, mother of questionable morals, broken home, head chopped off and thrown away, the elephant workaround, stinky cave home -- he’s a real testament to the pachyderm spirit. Each and every day that big shit-eating grin is plastered across that big galoot’s mug. Every single dank day he welcomes the children with outstretched arms that never seem to tire. Four no less. And every single day ever he greets the hordes with the profound joy of a Walmart greeter. Maybe better because you can smell desperation when you turn into a Walmart parking lot.

If I took anything away from the Elephant Cave I would have to say it was toe fungus. Possibly Spore-Acquired Neural Disruption. Cancer, but we’ll see how that plays out. I didn’t take away a transcendent experience. Or aesthetic inspiration. Nor geologic wonder. I didn’t stuff any “awe inspired by ancient whispers of the wonders of the vastness of the great beyond” in my mind pocket. The craftsmanship was a labor of phenomenal dexterity, accomplishment, and love, but my takeaway was that even if you get your head lopped off and wind up with an elephant head, sprout arms, swell to obscene obesity, and forced to live in a stinky cave with constant reminders of your parent’s genitals, and a whole bunch of assholes rubbing your trunk every day, you can be happy. It’s your attitude that counts.

We emerged into fresh sunlight, and Grandma took our sarongs and signed, “Me take picture.”

“No.”

“Free.”

“Jason, let her take our picture. For God’s sake”

“Fine.”

She fiddled and phutzed with my camera until a busload of bloated Bavarians blundered into the shot. She wandered off us, it clicked, and she shoved the camera in my hands and yelled, at them “Tour!”

“How much?”

“How much you pay?”

“Five hundred rupiahs.”

“More!” she barked at them.

“No.”

“Change 5,000 for me?”

“I can’t.”

“Can.”

“No.”

“Need change.”

“No.”

“Goodbye!”

“Come back soon!”

“Tomorrow, I promise!”

She smiled, and I did too.

Later that afternoon we went back to the spa. I had my first session. Dr. James Taylor explained it like this:

“Say you’re a 5-year-old boy. Your father comes home one day and spanks you for something your brother did (which didn’t apply to me as I’m an only child). Before that, he was a god to you, your entire world, and since he was a god to you, it must have been your fault. As a child, it’s always your fault (which applied directly to me).”

I imagined the lines in James Taylor’s face were desert arroyos, his small, deep-set dark eyes hypnotic, like desert somethings. He had a powerful, soothing presence.

“Now you feel a total loss of self-esteem, you’re shattered. And your dad probably got into a fight with his boss or wife, but you don’t know that. You feel terrible. And you feel it in your body – that’s why we call them feelings. You may not remember that, but your body does. What I do is kinesiology, I find the hurt that you many not remember but your body does. What I need to start, to find the right question, is the window to your subconscious. Hold out your arm. I’m going to push down. Your body won’t lie. Are you Jason? Yes. Are you Bill Clinton? If you believe it, your body will tell me. Now, what is something that you would like to happen in your life?”

“I’d like to be able to finish big projects, specifically writing. I get about two-thirds through something, and lose conviction or faith in what it is I’m attempting to fail at.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to work through your power points and see where your weaknesses are.” He pushed down on my arm when he touched my head, heart, various organs, until he got to my spleen. “Self-esteem,” he said. “Describe your mother.”

“Bright, goal-oriented, critical of society, driven, capable.”

“Let’s see, did you feel low self-esteem before you were born?”

Arm went down. “First trimester, yes. Second, no. Third, no. Okay, do you know what your mother was feeling at that time?”

“No – they wanted me – I was wanted.”

“You should ask her how she felt then. I want you to put your hand on your head and your other on your spleen and bend over so I can reach your back from here.”

We were facing each other on chairs and he grabbed the little brown hammer – two heads – spaced to be about either side of a vertebrae.

“Try to remember how you felt.”

My stomach clenched and my legs seized up. He clacked twice on three places on my spine. “Those are your meridian points. That’s no longer just considered Chinese philosophy. We know those are energy bands in your body. That breaks the signal your body sends to make you feel that way. Okay. Let’s start again. Head, organs, heart. Heart. That,” he looked at the chart, “signifies loss and vulnerability.”

“Yeah,” I said.

With the arm again. “Before you were born? No. One? No. Two? It’s almost hard to tell with you. You’re strong. Do you work out?”

“No.”

“Okay. Two? No. Three? Yes. Do you know what happened when you were three?”

“My parents almost got divorced.”

“You’ve hidden that from yourself. I’m sure you knew it then. Kids are bright. They know what’s going on. You can’t live in the same house, under the same roof, and not know that your parents aren’t happily married. Put your hand on your heart and your head, bend over, and feel the way you felt then.”

My body clenched, he clack-clacked and repeated an affirmation that I was okay. My thoughts had cleared when he was done.

“Let’s start again,” he went through and all was strong. “I have an affirmation for you that I want you to repeat every day for 21 days. I don’t know why 21, but they say it works. I can accomplish whatever task I think is important. Say it.”

He pushed down on my arm as I said, “I can accomplish whatever task I think is important.”

The arm held. “I can complete any task.” The arm held. He varied the phrase several more times and the arm held. “Now you plant a seed when you say, maybe I can’t. Wayne Dyer wrote a book called ‘Believing is Seeing.’ What is, is what you believe. I can’t finish things for you. You can, when you don’t hold yourself back. If you think you are the world’s biggest fuck-up, what are you going to be? You’ve got to set yourself free, be free to believe that you can write whatever you want – the best screenplay of all time – better than Esterhas – or whoever – that’s getting six million to write a movie. That you can get an Oscar, you can get the rewards for your work. That your agent will call and tell you Warner Brothers bought your script and Dustin Hoffman wants the lead. That you are brighter, better, and more talented than any of those guys out there writing screenplays. You believe it don’t you?”

“Yes.”

The arm held.

“What is, is what you believe. Believe it and you will see it. Believe, believe, believe.”

I felt like sacking the quarterback. I shook his hand. I told him the three words he said that struck me were -- believe, believe, believe. I asked if he had time for an adjustment. The big man broke my neck again and I loved the feeling of whiplash, the sound of bones cracking in my neck, stars in my eyes.

I sweated in the steam room and reflected on the sheer bizarreness of being born with a loss of self-esteem, and reflected over belief in the whirlpool which, when I went under, and after that conversation, felt even more like a womb.

Later, Tracey and I put some pieces together. If you don’t finish something you can’t fail, and failure is our worst enemy. Neither of us thinks the other will, but we are both afraid we will. We are each other’s harbor. We are free in each other’s love, free from bullshit, going to higher levels. She will sing. I will write. Then we grabbed some take out and had dinner in bed.

September 25

We woke up and made love in the morning light. We sat on the porch in the sun high above the water garden with running irrigated water, ponds, statues, sculpted landscape, all enfolded in a dreamy jungle panorama. Wayan brought us coffee, tea, pancakes, toast, and fresh fruit carved in into intricate designs. Everything here is elegant. The architecture, gardening, food, the clothes, this is the most civilized island on the planet, except for the tourists.

Running water is sacred to the Balinese and can be found most everywhere. Water runs down from Mount Agung and is channeled from rivers and hundreds of streams into thousands of fields and gardens, as it has been for thousands of years. It’s sacred to wash in the river, as the Balinese do, after work or at the end of the day, even though most have showers. Rice paddies are flooded, ducks are cut loose, and hundreds of them waddle in and float around and eat the bugs that eat the rice, bringing esteem to “The Duck Man.” Then the fields are drained, and the rice is harvested.

Riverbeds are quarried for the stone used to carve animal and spirit statues, and villages mostly consisting of carvers exist for this reason. There seems to be a balance in almost everything the Balinese do -- which seemed to me to be the solution to the ultimate problem of life.

We hired a bemo, or little van, to take us in air-conditioned splendor from Ubud to Seminyak – Dalia’s, for a total of $7, with tip. He asked where we stayed, how much.

“Fifteen thousand,” I said.

“Very expensive,” he said. I’d lied by 10,000 because I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it.

“I want to stay for free,” I said.

“On the moon?” he asked. “How many kids you going to have?”

“Ten.” Tracey glared at me. “If the space suit holds up.”

When I asked if he liked the President, he said he didn’t. He scowled. He gave his kids control of important jobs and they were very wealthy. He confided that he hated the man.

“Plus,” he said, “government doubled Bali population with Javanese. From about 2.5 to 3 million to 5 or 6 million.”

There are 300 million people in Java.

“Is it about 200 kilometers from California to Washington?” he asked.

“Sixty-five hundred miles,” I said.

“Oh, very big country.” He scowled as we came into insane traffic. I conceded another 5,000 to take us from Kuta to Seminyak – another half mile. He said to call him next time we needed transport.

We arrived at Dalia’s, I shaved, ate red Thai curry, called my mom for her 53rd birthday and told her I was moving here. She wasn’t surprised. I got to talk to my dad talk long enough to tell him I love him. One of my many echoes I will never forget.

Obnoxious Mimi showed up, talked about a bathing suit she forgot for five minutes, until she was reminded to say hello. We vowed not to let her shit on our parade. Especially with what Dan was about to pull off.

The Oceanic Odyssey cruise he was booking us on would’ve cost a fortune. Pool, Jacuzzi, tender boats, showers on the dive platform, luxury suites, king bed, TV, fridge, bottomless gourmet buffet, island trips...

The Oceanic Odyssey, somewhere in the Indonesian Archipeligo

Dan got us the cruise for free in exchange for modeling for a travel brochure he was shooting. Not Sexy Pants. Me. I figured, sure, Lula will model, she’s gorgeous, I’m the accessory, I’ll while away my days reading, writing, and drinking. Nope, Dalia was the woman for one couple, so he needed a guy. Using the process of elimination, I was shocked to run the numbers and realize that was me – my first and last modeling g]['g. David and Sarah were the other couple. Utah Mark was to do lighting, Australian Louise ligger, English Ian who looked like Phil Collins, his personal assistant. This farce allowed Dan to bring along a ridiculously swollen entourage for a 6-person job.

On board, the first thing we did was hit the poolside bar. After intros we sat at tables being photographed for a while until they decided we needed coffee and biscuits to make it look like breakfast. A glare from the afternoon light frustrated Dan and Mark. Dalia and I talked. She grew up in Toronto till ten, then Israel for seven years, then Austin, California, and now Bali for six. Her parents are Yugoslavian. Her father lives in India and makes a prestigious jewelry line.

Then we, super models, drank all the props. We sent English Ian who looked like Phil Collins off for vodka-oranges. We talked for maybe an hour. Then we drank the props again. Dan and Mark weren’t happy. The McDonald’s sign on the dock was in the shot so they all took a smoke break and Sarah wanted more vodka so we sent her for another round. I’m the only one who didn’t smoke – and the boat left the harbor. We were called to the top deck by the obnoxious alarm and counted off by room. Then we were told a bunch of shit about saving our lives. This was the beginning of a movie where the boat sinks, and we were talking the whole time.

“Where are the life jackets?” Tracey asked.

“In your room.”

“What if you’re not in your room?”

“Good question,” Dan said.

“Take one off a kid,” I said.

“Are they teaching us shuffle board?” Ian asked.

When it was over we found Dalia engaged in conversation with the first mate. “I bet she’ll get in the lifeboat,” someone said.

“The crew is slimy. One says goodbye, she turns around, and oh hello,” Dan said.

“Captain Dan,” I said, “You’d have a servant wave for you if you could.”

“You would too,” he said.

“I’d pay them.”

We convened for the afternoon after conjecture as to the Princess Di murder conspiracy. We figured the Queen did it so as not to have a King with a Muslim bastard half-brother with arms-smuggling relations. We drank two bottles of red wine at dinner, and two white. Mimi had skipped the above-deck meeting where the first mate had tried to pick up Dalia. He walked by and Dalia said, “Mimi, why don’t you get a piece of that?” She did. The first mate told her, “You’ve been a bad girl for skipping the meeting, so as punishment, why don’t you come to dinner with me?”

“She showed up gagging for it,” Mark from Utah said. He smoked too much to be Mormon, and drank too. His motorcycle wreck didn’t seem to have him as daffy as Dalia said, but I never knew him before. They wouldn’t make the table for nine, so Dalia had to sit with Mimi the horse-face lawyer and the crew.

Ian was the first to notice that the First Mate had a twitchy eye. Dan liked his short pants. Thus was he christened Twitchy Tight Pants. What did he do? Room service...

We discussed the housing units known as elang-elangs. They were cute, and they all lived in them, but they didn’t know any Balinese who did. Probably because of the bug infestations in the thatch roofs and shit on the tables, replacing the roof every few years, and horizontal rains. Balinese gave ’em up after the Bronze Age, marked ‘em up and sold them to ex-pats.

Tracey had Bali-belly and Ian gave her a Chinese cure-all, “Do Chai Pills.” They said they were good for: “Intoxication, Indigestion, Fever, Diarrhea, Vomiting, Gastrointestinal Diseases and Over Eating.” Better than a Balinese doctor who can buy a degree for 10 million rupiahs. That’s why people fly to Singapore for treatment. One guy surfing a few months ago cut his leg, went to hospital, and died. Another hurt his neck, they bandaged it on Bali, and three weeks later he got it cat scanned in Singapore. It was broken. Mark would’ve been crippled if he hadn’t been airlifted after his motorcycle accident. They say you go in with a broken leg and never come out. No Western babies are born here. One lady Dan knew had $5,000/year insurance with airlift evacuation. She called four months pregnant and they couldn’t help her, everyone was at a convention in Jakarta.

September 26

The next morning Tracey jumped out of bed, pulled the curtains and looked out the window. She gasped.

“Jason, look at these islands, the mountains.”

I grumbled and stumbled to her. Uninhabited islands, shades of tan, yellow and brown, Sumbawa.

“Look!” She screamed, and a little bullet jumped out of the water, a dolphin playing in the ship’s wake. She bumped her forehead against the window.

“Dolphins!” she said again, “there’s another one!” Tears began to form in her eyes. She looked like a little girl. The dolphins streaked underwater, and jumped over the wake, racing and playing, happy as you please.

“I think I’ll get to swim with dolphins on this trip,” she said, “don’t you?”

“Yes. I think so.” I wanted her to. It’d been her dream as long as I knew her, about 10 months.

“You know, now they have troubled kids swim with dolphins, they’re very healing. One lady was afraid to swim with dolphins, but finally did. A dolphin poked her in the stomach. She’d been afraid, so she wondered what’s up with this? Until they found a tumor in her belly.”

“How did the dolphin know that?” I asked.

“They’re very aware, very sensitive to vibrations, maybe their sonar, that’s how they know where they are, maybe they can see right through us.”

“What if we came back as dolphins and played in the sea?”

“Oh, that would be the best.”

The shoot didn’t go swell that morning. We set up on the top deck, Dalia and I in swimsuits on lounge chairs, and David running in stop-motion. The boat swung in the harbor of Sumbawa. It blocked the port side. We moved to the aft but a dinghy tanker was behind us, and there were more oil tankers to starboard. Tracey traveled on an excursion to the island while we pretended to eat potatoes and eggs, laugh at Sarah eating watermelon in a manner not in keeping with someone who had paid the kind of money it would take to cruise on this ship, and listen to Dan complain about the captain, the scenery, the light, the shade, the pool, the hot tub, and the fact that Ian, Mark, and Louise, his art director, makeup assistant, and ligger were all in bed asleep. He took a few shots and we had breakfast, aristocratically leaving the plates for the crew to clean up. We also put together the facts that seemed to indicate Ian had put in 5 a.m. wake-up calls for everyone, then left his phone off the hook. When we went for the equipment we took the maid’s skeleton key and found Mark in the shower and Ian with a “what wake up call?” look on his face.

“Where the bloody hell have you been?” Dan scolded in his erect English schoolboy accent.

“Here. Where else?”

“You should’ve been downstairs at 7 a.m.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine.”

“Are they still serving breakfast?”

“The crew’s eating. I’m so fucking pissed,” Dan scowled. “Look at those shite buildings. How late were you up?”

“Around one, two... We closed the bar. We got to drinking with some of the crew, an Afrikaner and a couple of nonsensical Indonesians. You know what they call Twitchy Tight Shorts?”

“What?”

“Gash Shnefter.”

“I think we can translate that.”

Dan did four lines of coke Ian laid out and said he felt much better. He did seem to acquire a twinkle in his eye. I was excused and laid down for a bit to write in my journal, then we reconvened in the gym. The light was wrong, all wrong, from every angle, because of the mirrors, the windows, the fluorescent lights that turned everything green and the black floor that sucked up the remainder of the light. I looked in the mirror and made a stupid face by sticking out my lips like a donkey. I wanted to paint it and call it, “The fact That It Exists And Is ridiculous To Itself Is Ridiculous.” The fact that there were mirrors on opposing walls meant that you could see into infinity, so maybe “Infinitely Ridiculous.”

Hung over, Mark was not a convincing fitness director, especially when he asked, “Isn’t it time for a smoke break?”

Dalia pumped iron in her tight outfit. She was preoccupied with her bangs, and she’d ask, “I look too bony, don’t I?” Or she’d say, “Don’t get my profile.” She related the story of her photographer Jim Parks. He’s 300+, shiny, and married a 15 year-old Thai girl who tried to get him thrown out of the country. The first time Dahlia met him at a jewelry shoot he asked if she wanted to have sex. When she said no, he said he wasn’t into penetration, how about fellatio and cunnilingus? The other photographer was out of town so she did the shoot, but his pictures were crap. She paid him a $1,000 so she could get the photos of her friend’s candles.

After two hours of sitting around the gym we changed and went to the dining room about noon. They set out an immaculate spread under the persnickety supervision of a Euro-Chef.

“Grab some plates,” Dan said, “get some food.”

The passengers from the day trip flooded the cabin. Dalia and I piled rice and curry on our plates – chunks of crab and shrimp. Tracey came up to me. “Hey baby, we’re shooting huh?”

“We’re shooting right now, move,” Dalia said. Passengers started grabbing plates.

“Could you please hold off just one second?” Dan asked. “We’re trying to get a few photos.”

“Well, you better be fast,” a man with two kids blustered, plates in hand.

Maybe 20 people gathering in the swirling chaos, trying to get to the Indonesian salads, spices, sauces, the roast lamb, bowtie pasta, swirled fruit with whip cream in champagne glasses, berries and crumble. Water, water, everywhere, nor a drop to drink.

I joined Tracey for lunch out on the deck. David and Sarah were there, they’d had three hours off. Louise came out, she wasn’t shaking so bad as when I saw her playing chess with Ian, trying not to spew puke from the beer fumes Ian gave off from his morning Heineken. Dan came out saying he couldn’t very well tell the company he hadn’t been able to take any good pictures so he’d need another cruise, which wouldn’t be any different.

Tracey wore the sarong she bought in the village at Sumbawa.

“Hot and dry,” she described it. “And dusty. Chickens everywhere. The people were so, so friendly. They were genuinely happy to have people in their homes.” She went into one and saw an old man smoking funny cigarettes, playing a flute like the ones they charm snakes with. The women performed a wedding ceremonial dance. Then there were 6 buffalo races, through water, and she was chosen to dance with the winning man. They kept showing her how to adjust the sarong she bought for 20,000 rupiahs, quite a bit, or $7 as she looks at it. She takes a different view than me, the money means more to them than her, that they created it, and welcomed her into their village. She is a true believer in abundance. I find it harder to come by.

After lunch she went snorkeling and Dan wouldn’t let me go, so I took a nap. Tracey came back and reported enormous sea monsters, brain coral, neon blue fish.

“You could’ve gone,” she said.

“What’d you want me to do about it?” I snapped. “Dan had kept me on call, and I’m grumpy after a long nap.”

“You need to sign up for tomorrow’s snorkel,” she said.

“I guess.” Finally she got up and did it for me. This would become a pattern. She would push, I would resist, she would push harder out of frustration for what she perceived as my inaction, and I’d let her because I’d be sick of fighting. I can trace our ten worst decisions to this single equation.

When she came back, I said, “C’mere, let’s start over.” I pulled her onto the bed in an embrace and told her I loved her. I needed her. I wanted her. We made love for several hours.

Over salmon salad, seafood pumpkin Bolognese soup, Indonesian sweet and spicy pork, Louise told me she, Ian and Mark had an ad company.

“You need a writer?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, then explained everyone and their mother wanted to work for them.

“I have a Master’s in journalism.”

“A journalist, eh?” Louise asked.

“Here’s the brief,” Ian said. “We can’t afford flights and visas for people.”

“Skip the flight,” I said.

“With a Visa you have to leave every 60 days, if you can get one. You can incorporate and work freelance, but it’s expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“Ten thousand,” he said, “and it’s a nightmare. If they don’t like the color of your eyes one day they can kick you out. There’s no legal recourse. You come here for the lifestyle, not capital investment, and it’s risk investment. I don’t spend a dollar I don’t expect to lose. Some build houses, buy land, but they can take that all away from you.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

We got the 6:30 wake-up call at 5:30, so I lay in bed for an hour in the dark, occasionally running my hand over Tracey, telling her in her sleep I loved her. The 6:30 call came too. We grabbed some breakfast and threw together our things for the Komodo excursion. Ian joined us and we climbed off the back of the boat into the Zodiac in the blistering heat, 7:15 a.m.

Komodo is another desert island, the moisture Sumatra attracts having been siphoned off by Bali, lush, fertile, wet Bali, before the currents can get to Lombok, Komodo, Sumbawa. The little outboard hummed and whipped us along massive waves, the dark, troubled currents passing from the Pacific to the Indian around this island. Forty or so of us collected and the Park Ranger lined us up single file and said, “Your attention please! There are many snakes, such as pit vipers, cobras, and grass snakes, please stay on the path. The walk is flat, it is two kilometers there, and two kilometers back, or one mile in American terms. Please take a bottle of water that is provided for you. Welcome to Komodo National Park. I am the park ranger. My name is Louis, if you have questions for me, please ask. Thank you for your attention, we can begin to walk now.”

We entered the arid forest of palms as old as the hills, as thick as oak, as big as weeping willows. We stopped and Louis, in his green khaki trousers and shirt, looking vaguely military, pointed with his head-high, forked staff, which I supposed he used to stop charging Komodo dragons.

“This for the village that was here that moved when National Park established in 1980. There was a palm here this size, people eat in time of famine, eat the inside,” he pointed to the trunk, “popular in North Korea.”

A wild boar bolted by.

“What a boar,” Ian said.

Then we saw a tennis-ball tree, and five head of deer. Deer in themselves were not so amazing, the fact that there were deer was. They couldn’t be native, and they must’ve wrecked havoc on the environment when they landed, they eat everything in sight. I asked about the deer. The Portuguese introduced them 500 years ago to hunt. Now nothing could be hunted in the park. The deer didn’t know that, when the Komodo went after them, they felt pretty hunted.

Louis showed us the nest of a brush pheasant, a mound four feet high, 10-feet wide, 10 feet long. Komodos literally brush the dirt into a mound and dig down and make a nest where they lay their eggs. They love this.

Tough little Ian lost his cool when we first laid eyes on the Komodo, a big fella, long as I am tall, six feet, resting in the shade, flat-bellied, legs forward, legs back, eyes opiate – a mellow cat, top of the food chain. How lizards ever got so big I’ll never know. Good Jesus I can’t believe it would you look at that, I think Ian said. We tromped up on it and made the Japanese look like shy photographers.

“Do they eat people?” I asked Louis.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Three days ago.”

“Bull!” Tracey said.

“Bull yes,” he said indignantly, “Three days ago!”

“Here?”

“Nearby, villager. Not careful – take siesta – dummy leave door open.”

“Kill?” she asked.

“Nine kill – since 1974.”

Apparently pre-1974 is pre-historical on Komodo.

“In 1974 Mr. Baron of Switzerland was killed, and eight villagers since then,” Louis said. His eyes sparkled. He had a neat, close-trimmed goatee and the ever-present Indonesian humor just under the surface.

“What do they eat?” Tracey asked. “Children?”

“Yes, children,” he laughed. “And animals.”

“What animals?”

“Deer. Pigs. They eat baby pigs and the pigs try to stop them.”

“Do the pigs ever win?”

“No. They eat buffalo.”

“Bull,” Tracey said.

“No, buffalo. They bleed them, and follow them, and wait for them and eat them when weak.”

“How fast do they run?”

“Eighteen kilometers an hour.”

“How fast do we run?”

“About that.”

“And they swim?”

“Yes. If a deer runs into the ocean, Komodo swims after.”

“Do they fight each other?”

“No.”

Louis walked away and Ian and another guy from the boat walked over. I related the facts. Then I also told him they climb trees. The guy looked in the tree above us and looked at me. He grinned. Walked away.

“My God,” Ian said. “There’s no getting away from them. They’re land sharks. They’re killers.”

Tracey had warned me about Bruce who had made advances on her. I suggested he get closer to the Komodo for a picture.

“I want to take a picture of them feeding,” I said.

Bruce laughed, nervously. He said there was nothing of his he wanted to see in its mouth and walked away.

“Why don’t they come after us?” Ian asked.

“You know how predators separate a weak prey?” I asked. “They’re waiting for Bruce.”

We left the National Park and the Zodiacs took us to an idyllic beach. Dan shot Mimi and me in scuba gear. She fell over the side. I talked them into letting us dive for a minute, and Mimi the Horseface Lawyer wouldn’t descend. Back in the boat she realized she hadn’t deflated her B.C.

On the beach, alone, I told Tracey about my dream, in the shack. We were at Dr. Jim’s – Tracey was having a session – I snuck in – but Jim knew I was there. He sat like a guru on a big white bed, and Tracey sat on a big white bed across from him. It was a healing session. I moved out of hearing distance so I wouldn’t feel like I was eavesdropping. I could see her face – she had a look of delight – attentive. I saw Dalia sitting with her. Jim had her move closer. Tracey turned around. They kissed – held each other close – squeezed breasts, and I saw joy on her face. I slipped away – not hurt at first – but it set in – then anger – why wasn’t it me who helped her heal? I was mad at myself for being angry. Be an adult – help her heal – but I stayed angry – and when she came out I was cross with her.

She said I’d been feeling that way. That I’d felt like my feelings had no place, were selfish, wouldn’t help her heal. That I was angry. It was true. Back on the boat we showered and made fierce love.

Dan awoke me from the nap – another shoot. Dalia and I sat there – “the talent” – we discussed Thailand – the drug scene – a friend of hers who’d died a month ago. Cocaine turned out to be heroine. Sex. In Hamburg, she saw a woman fucked by a transsexual in a giant shell as Americans in their Fifties and Sixties watched – and six couples at once, etc…

I talked to Indonesian crewmember Dharma on the top deck who’s getting married to Nagrid – her name means island – his means goodness or positive energy. He’s a tour guide, working on the boat four months to get $150 to get a tour guide license. He speaks Japanese and English.

Tracey lost her grandmother’s ring. I tore up the room. She cried and hit her shoulder – twice. We denounced material objects. I found it.

At dinner, I scammed for job opportunities – teaching English and writing. Dan asserted that if DNA sought the opposite sex so as not to inbreed, he’d marry a three-foot- tall black girl.

“That’s just a pygmy of your imagination,” I said.

Mark was married twice. In between, or after, he did 540 women in as many weeks.

“Wet hole,” he called it.

We sang Annie’s Song by John Denver in chorus. It was atrocious. Dalia told the story of her soul mate in Montana – his girlfriend Sam he married – their love triangle and wedding. How she was the best man for him – how he wanted to do bong hits and hunt – how she asked his permission to sleep with another guy – she did – and came home and he made her fuck him. It was the worst she said. Mark and Dan crossed their legs. The other guy got in a motorcycle wreck – then she was his nurse. She went to San Francisco – had three glasses of wine to talk to her soul mate for the first time in 15 years and didn’t recognize him. “Paul was dead,” she said by way of explanation.

She read my palm.

“You have a very long fate line. A creative curve to your palm. Lots of worry lines. You’re an old soul. Something crosses your path your entire life. No wonder you have worry lines. But, you have angels looking over you. Balinese say embrace your good and evil, that’s the whole. Your fingers are widely spaced, bend backwards, flexible. You fit in almost anywhere.”

Afterward, I fell asleep a little drunk, glad that I’d written, grateful Tracey was my mate – no matter what the critics of marriage, DNA, or monogamy say.

September 27

It finally cooled off. It’d been long and hot. The maids knocked on the door – wanting us to leave to clean the room. Dan and Dalia were at breakfast. They’d been flirting before and I wondered if they hooked up. Dalia told Tracey no, said she’d tell her if she had. Dan said he saw Sarah and David’s little white bums going at it on the top deck last night. They’d walked right past them lying down, doing it on a deck chair. They were hung over to the gills the next morning, and Sarah could barely get together a card with her boss’s name for me.

Then the seas turned rough and hot as we pulled into the port of Bali. The cruise over, we all hugged and kissed and said goodbyes over a fun, if not productive, trip.

Back at Dalia’s, Horseface went on and on about needing to eat, buy a trunk, ship it, while Dalia had to get back to running her business, and we went to the beach to escape and get out of Dalia’s hair.

The riptide was insane and signs said so, and also that the swimming was dangerous and essentially the beach was closed. The noon heat staggering, we wound up poolside at the Bali Holiday Resort, bellied up to the sunken bar. Tracey topless, in the pool, a Foster’s in my hand, and a Johnnie Walker and Coke in hers. I told her I often thought of the little flashes of the future, as parents, grandparents... I needed her smile. I often thought of my fortune of having someone I think is so – well – I can’t remember what I said – but her glowing intellect, bright humor, and clever company all played into it.

I came to think of the Holiday Resort as our immersion into White Bali – mostly Australian and overweight. There’s a side of me that sickens at an Indonesian having to massage a bellied-up whale whose only achievement seems to be coming from a different country. Part of me likes to sit in the shade by the pool and have satay brought to me, and the other part of me is anti-colonial. I’d almost rather be serving someone satay.

I think the ex-pats underestimate Indonesians because they actually want them to think they’re simple. They aren’t, but it makes life easier, and far more amusing, if you put jam on someone’s toast before the butter. They’ve lived the good life for thousands of years. They know what they’re doing. To have whites come in and give you 20 cents a day to listen to them bitch is no incentive I can see.

That evening, writing in my journal, as the mosquito net on the bed surged with the wind, I still felt the heave of the ocean.

September 28

We left at 7:15 a.m., got a cab at Benoa, took the Ekspress Shuttle ferry that although promised real engines got us in late at 10:30 with engine trouble. They blared Batman 3 in Dolby, with no food. Her sugar levels fell and a Twix and Coke hardly sufficed.

I wanted to help her as the bemo climbed the mountain range on the squirrely road. She felt knives in her tummy, and missed the monkeys on the side of the road, the view down the valley, the jungle hills rising on either side, crops nestled between palms and winding rivers where they bathed and washed clothes. The chicken soup at the little port town of Bansal only just helped sustain her life. She said it literally smelled like cat shit to her. Her imagination doesn’t help. That Third World smell of chicken makes her think of them wiping their asses with their hands and preparing food as rats scurry by.

Tracey hated the salt-water shower at Nusa Tiga, our new home at the end of the world on Gili Trawangan, an island off Lombok, the next island over from Bali. “I didn’t even complain about the cold water,” she said, “but salt water... You go snorkeling, you want to rinse off in fresh water. I just want a towel. I don’t want to dry off with a dirty T- shirt.”

We’d taken the pony cart, the cidomo, to the end of the island, the remotest part of Gili Trawangan and there was nothing I could do.

Indonesia, Gili Trawanga, Shady Beach View.jpg

September 30

The Gilis are the kind of small island chain, like the Bay Islands of Honduras, or the Cyclades of Greece, that destroy time and create a mindlessness conducive to lethargy, indecision and complete and total peace.

Sitting in my new hammock (which I traded a pair of heavy, unnecessary Levi’s for) in the shade of a little thatch-roof hut on the beach, waiting for high tide, I enjoyed writing a few postcards, reading Nelson Algren’s “The Last Carousel” immensely, its stark foreboding a pleasant contrast to my blindingly happy beach. That was about it. If I got a wild hair up my ass I might walk around the island, but that would require sweating and a lot of it.

Tracey enrolled in a scuba class and asked me to join her for lunch, but our new home, Nusa Tiga, was on the north side of the island, whereas civilization, such as it was, spread across the southeast side. I’d have to take a cidomo, pony ekspress, a horse cart garishly painted, bouncing around on rubber tires with jingle bells. I’d spent three of the last four winters in Latin America, so bells and hot weather made perfect sense to me. When they played the Gypsy Kings every night at dinner I hallucinated Central America – from the sandpaper sounds of the palms and salt air straight off the sea to the smell of frying chicken and its opposite and equal reaction, feral cats. Close your eyes and it’s The Bay Islands. Tulum. Manuel Antonio. Buenos Aires. La Paz. Any La Paz.

I didn’t decline Tracey’s offer because I minded taking a cidomo – contrary to the Depression-era mindset I inherited from my Dad and his folks, I actually loved the extravagant decadence which I inherited from my Mom and her parents – but somehow the idea of having absolutely no regiment to my days picked me up by the scruff of my lazy and slammed me down on my new hammock.

The gentle wind and whisper of waves from the Pacific and Indian exchange through the Lombok Strait, no car noises, no cars, no vendors, no Germans, no dusty roads, no anybody, nobody but Gita – our kindly whip-smart 20-whatever host who the old chain smoker worked from 6:30 a.m. breakfast to 11:30 p.m. dinner (actually I haven’t been up past 10 – so I couldn’t say, but I heard) and always donned a smile no matter what.

Gita would sell me an Anker Bir at about 11 a.m. – a big, cold one. I’d put on a little buzz and snorkel, eerily similar to a dream I had last night. I was scuba diving alone and came across a diver filming something I couldn’t see. He had the latest equipment, an assistant, and a boat that circled on the surface. They were near the surface, I sat on the bottom watching, faintly aware of people somewhere aware of what was happened to me from afar. The assistant pointed, I followed his outstretched arm to a shark, it must’ve been 10-feet long – going for them, passing by, he filmed the whole time. The crew left and directly over me the shark jumped out of the water – in the air for quite a while – then broke the water with a thunderous splash and swam right past me. I swam, safely, away.

I also dreamt I was in a desert garden with little kids running around. Cactus, rocks, reds, whites, and browns of the American Southwest. Careful, I said, there are snakes around. A rock snake (Tracey and I had talked about rockfish before bed) raised its head near me, and what I thought was a rock, wasn’t. I had a pair of shoes that were supposed to protect me, but they were 10 feet away. The snake had the necessary fangs and red and white spines on its head. I wasn’t afraid as I moved away a little at first, cautiously – then back toward it. I felt it out for its rhythms and as it moved, I moved, until I was quite in harmony with what I’d thought was dangerous, dangerous enough to kill me. See, I told the kids, go with it, don’t fight it, and it’ll be ok.

Over a breakfast of banana jaffe (pressed toast with fruit filling), lemon pancakes, a fruit bowl, and Lombok coffee (which is like Bali coffee which is like cowboy coffee only stronger), Tracey said my desert dream was about our conversation yesterday. It started the night before when I asked if she’d ever been afraid of the dark. She had been, she said. She had to sleep with the closet light on, far from the door. She still made me sleep on the side of the bed by the door. I had been locked in a dark closet in preschool by old bitches, for not wearing underwear. We also had the Atlanta Child Murders, so I could never decide whether I wanted to sleep on my stomach or my back because I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to feel the blade pierce. It wasn’t a matter if I’d feel the blade coming through my skin and bones, but when. Two walls of my room were windows and the limbs and leaves were hands and knives. Before any foreshadowing, I figured out the tree in “Poltergeist.” I was so afraid I slept with my parents until I was ten. I thought I was the reason they got divorced, I came between them.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, don’t you baby?” Tracey asked.

“I know it logically,” I said, “but...”

Tracey’s biological mother had her right after her 15th birthday. Tracey was raised by her grandparents, but there were some messed up years in the beginning. Her mother was just a child herself, and having a child so young, with a man who was abusive, inflicted some deep wounds that bled over onto Tracey. There were signs that he abused Tracey as well, though she has no clear memory of it. She does have body memories. I’ve found some places. She was two and three then. She definitely saw things she never should have seen. She was in some dangerous situations. It’s all very murky. He went to prison twice, one time when she was a toddler he kidnapped her during a supervised visit, and there was an all-out Texas style manhunt. She was home in a couple of days, but she slept on the floor next to her grandparents bed, and cried all the time, and beat her head rhythmically against the floor. Her teenage mother was broken in heart and spirit. Her grandparents’ marriage was running on fumes when they inherited her, and they often went weeks without speaking. Dysfunctional parents are the common human ancestry.

The trick to marriage, if there is one, I was saying on that second day on Trawangan, is not to step on the other person’s landmines, to be able to tell the difference between reasonable and unreasonable expectations. Like any partnership, business, or friendship, it requires compromise. And it’s like an organism – it has to be fed and given lots of attention. People get married and put nothing into it thinking, that’s it – and they get nothing out of it. After six years my parents were ready to get divorced. I don’t want that.

“I need a lot of attention,” she said.

“I need to give a lot. I also need a lot of space.”

“You have it.”

“I know where the landmines are, I won’t step on them. I don’t want to. Like we were saying, love is the strongest thing there is.”

“It’s also the most delicate,” she said, “and difficult to get. Wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t.”

“I think we both think it’s more fragile than it is – that if we say one wrong thing, it’ll all come down. And that’s not true. It’s the strongest thing there is.”

We were talking later in the room. It came around to someone she knew who was in the room while his mother was raped by someone who broke into their house. He went to therapy and the therapist molested him. In spite of his begging and crying his mom kept taking him. She had no idea.

I wondered why so many roads wandered back to that topic. For me it was scraping the surface, which hurt every time, but never dug deep enough to remove the cancer. There’s no one thing and then it’s just over. In spite of the fan the room was still getting hotter as it approached noon.

“I need catharsis,” I said. I needed some way to get my head around it. I hated her father, and as Tracey pointed out, I never met the man. She gave him a second chance when she was 16, but he blew it. During that time he told her he never abused her. She wasn’t sure – a child’s perceptions compounded by a teen’s angry memories – but through therapy she learned that wasn’t important – handling the feelings now was. Getting raped at 13 by a guy at a friend’s party didn’t help either. Neither did two unhealthy relationships, an unannounced parental divorce, and a subsequent move to Dallas, friends dying, more... She’d learned a lot to get where she was, and had taught me a lot. The best was not to plug into these people. They would drain my energy like an electric socket. I’d never be free while I was angry, and I was so angry.

“They make their own hell,” she said. “They have to live with who they are and what they’ve done – if they’re not dead already. If you judge you have to carry that weight around, and that’s a lot of weight.”

I’ve heard it’s good to be angry, or at least okay because you can use it. But getting upset whenever she talked about the past didn’t help either of us. Their beds are made, I figured. I looked out the window, at the clear sea, the wind blew through the trees like violins – and let it all go.

“Let’s make love,” I said, but we fucked like banshees.

A quiet sigh began the song as I lay back in my hammock, a few slow strums, then Buckley, recently dead of drowning, sings, “Well, I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don’t really care for music do you?” The beer began to go to my head, I wanted to write but my pen ran dry – a spider climbed past, and a fisherman sailed by. “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composes Hallelujah.” I loved that girl – with everything, and I worried it still wasn’t enough. I’d failed all the rest, or bailed. It’s like the plastic bag I could’ve saved from blowing into the ocean but waited till it was too late, the two-year-old girl I could’ve given money to help but didn’t think enough of it, the little boy who wanted Tracey to buy the mosquito coil, but I felt rushed to give him the money and didn’t do it, and he told her, “But you promised.”

Alive. What is it to be alive? The echoes of thought and tides of emotion – the way you love and dash from your fears, masking them as desire. The place you are and where you want to be. Why you tell yourself you can’t get there from here because you’re so afraid of failure. A mind to call your own, a love with room to roam, learning to stay and not run away, getting out of your own way.

“Well, your faith was strong, but you needed proof, you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to her kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew a Hallelujah.”

The last thing I remembered telling her was this: “I can complete any task that is important to me.”

She said, “I can trust Jason.”

September 30

There are many charms of Nusa Tiga. I’ve mentioned salt water coming out of the taps, the polyester mosquito net that stops dead the mosquitoes and the wind from the fan, but not the ants. I didn’t mention that the pillows date back to the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia in World War II. They used them for sandbags. Actually, we shared the room with the ants who were like little gods we had to leave daily offerings like mints, constipation tablets, and mango. Apparently, the floors are so dirty the ants get athlete’s foot also. I hope their diarrhea has subsided. We bought the anti-diarrhea pills for Tracey. I have diarrhea (the second time) and Tracey wants it. Gaati gaati, no waanti, waanti no gaati – as they say in Belize.

Gita said papaya would make her go. He conferred with the entire staff of the restaurant and after discussion they decided the best thing to make you go was papaya. Others said coffee, Coke, marijuana, and another opinion suggested she put her finger in her vagina and push it out, but she hasn’t resorted to that yet, that we know of. If something doesn’t give soon, she said she’s going to reach up there and pull it out. According to the latest reports, a graph of her bowel movements over the last five days would look like this: ↓ When there is a burst of activity she has farted. I hold the opinion that her constipation was partially attributable to the charms of Nusa Tiga. While looking at the food would make you think of shitting, eating it only makes you feel shitty. Breakfast is nice when the pancakes are cooked all the way through – but dinner... cats appreciate Mie Gooreng, but Tracey won’t eat them. The Gado Gado, steamed vegetables in peanut sauce, is quite good if your standards are very low. I had the chicken sandwich for lunch yesterday, which surprised me that I didn’t get bird flu or salmonella. Then again, you can’t get salmonella if it isn’t chicken. They call cats “kachings,” and there are many. Maybe they’re called kachings because every time they catch one, they make money, “Kaching!”

People make jokes about eating them, but we’ve noticed an eerie absence of dogs on the island. They have monkeys, goats, miniature horses, sea snakes, turtles, spiders, sharks, starfish, but not one dog.

The thing that most probably stands between Tracey and bowel bliss is the commode, a pretense at plumbing.

“You probably like the fact that you have to dump a pail of water into it to flush it,” she said.

“I do,” I said, “Applied plumbing, beyond the reach of the paraffin world of theory. I can finally see how it works and do it myself. Empowering. Running the water from the spigot next to the toilet relaxes me – opens me up to new possibilities – sometimes I even pour water into the little bucket and clean my ass with cold salt water like Muslims. But how do they dry themselves?”

We had a debate the first day over whether or not to put paper in the toilet, until I sat there thinking and discovered the big bucket was for flushing (anything) and the little bucket was for chasing the spider that lived under the toilet out of the bathroom. It took a 6-pound chunk of meat out of my side, but the cockroaches sensed it attacking me and formed a protective circle around me until I could refill the bucket. I noticed the water from the sink drained out of the bottom, and I didn’t even have to wash the spider away. All the water in the bathroom drained out of a hole in the corner under the sink, and the floor was shaped so as to make this feasible, including some of the water from the base of the toilet. Tracey also never found it charming that the smells radiating from the commode were rotten like that of a fetid dung-heap. It wasn’t so bad if you flushed it regularly, but she didn’t like that either, along with the fact that the shower automatically washed the toilet seat. One man’s treasure is another woman’s trash. I’ve got to hand it to her, in spite of the threat of discombobulated bowels, yeast infections, athlete’s foot, and malaria she was quite a sport about the whole thing.

I, for one, loved it. I loved looking out the bars of the window through the shady courtyard and bougainvillea to the turquoise ocean (even though I hate turquoise color). I loved shaving a new goatee in the wipe-bucket with a 20-cent razor blade called Turbo Razor (it couldn’t get through a whole beard). I loved cold, saltwater showers, greasing myself with Deet before bed, sweeping the floor every time I walked across it, constantly tracking sand in the bed anyway, and watching cockroaches tightrope walk across the mosquito nets in the Greatest Show on Earth before bedding down in my drying shorts for a long winter’s nap.

I knew I had to make the most of my time at Nusa Tiga, enjoy all its charms, because it couldn’t last forever. Nothing that heavenly or annoying can. Although she said she liked it, Tracey had already consented to a night at Trawangan’s premiere resort for the last night, on her credit card, even though it cost double the local monthly wage of 40,000 rupiahs. She’d tighten her belt and fork out $28.66 just, as she put it, “to get clean, for once.”

To make the most of my time, I set out to circumnavigate the island by sandal at about 11 a.m. I figured it was a good idea to set out in the heat of the day, but the offshore breeze kept me cool and I didn’t sweat as much as I thought I would. I saw beach and I saw sea. Besides sky, that was about it. A purple jellyfish washed ashore so I took a picture. I also took a picture of a fisherman’s boat made of water bottles next to his funky hut.

Instead of traversing the entire island I climbed the dusty hill at Sunset Bungalows, just north of the southern tip of the island. The ground, the trees, bushes and leaves were fried brown. The shell of the island is the only place you find any green at all. Stagnant water would evaporate. Malaria couldn’t survive here in the dry season. I figured snakes probably could. Tracey had told me about sea snakes, someone had seen one the day before alongside their boat. Big Ben, Tracey’s dive instructor who shamelessly picks his nose in public, said they’re 2,000 times more poisonous than the most poisonous land snake. I don’t know what calculator he uses – mine doesn’t have that function. If you’re bitten, the Indonesians pour boiling water on your leg and the summoning of your consciousness from third degree burns is the only thing that may keep you alive, along with rice, which I guess they’ll eat later when you’re dead of third degree burns. I didn’t see any snakes, but I was afraid of them, so much so that I jumped when I saw a bird in the brush. My fear projected me into an adventure situation as an explorer, and except for some baby goats and a few chickens nothing warranted this fantasy. Walking alone along the spine of the island, the flat expanse of the entire island could be surveyed. From my throne, a hot boulder, I looked out over the palm forests to sandy stretches at low tide, the royal blue of deeper water where the big fish lie, the other two Gilis to the west, and the cloudy mountain ranges of Lombok. Indonesia lay bare like a lover stretched out in front of me. The descending trail opened onto fields, scorched and crispy from the sun. A few people lived in small huts up there, just as a few lived on the beaches far below, self-sufficiently. What a thing to depend on no others in this day and age. I felt like learning everything I could from them, but the heat left me gagging for a beer.

Over a hill, I saw the village below, main street, without an ounce of poured concrete. It went much deeper from the shore than I’d thought. I don’t remember wondering where the locals lived. I guess I just figured it was some nebulous utopia. It wasn’t. The cinder blocks concentrated the heat in their homes, the homes were set close, they were clean, but not, shall we say, luxurious in any way. The offshore winds seemed to have been inhaled by tourists at the beach. The temple bullhorns emanated the prayers reverberating inside. A woman splashed the dirt road with water right in front of me and snapped at her children not to run away. In front of all the little bungalows, laundry hung like flags in celebration of National Boredom Day, and no one spoke English. There was little or no business. Location, location, location.

I caught up with Tracey but she had a dive to do, so I sat under a tree on the beach and drank a big beer, watching children play in the waves. We never saw an Indonesian woman in the water.

While I waited I watched a man wash his monkey. The monkey didn’t wish to be washed, but he sprayed him down nonetheless. He had a hard time of it. He chased the monkey around its little house-on-a-post for half an hour. I finally decided the wash job was for the man’s own perverse pleasure. The monkey wasn’t thrilled, and at any time he could’ve shortened the chain and, as my good friend Elvis Aaron Presley used to say, taken care of business in a flash.

The Canadian couple we talk to sometimes sat down a few tables from us at Trawangan’s premiere resort last night. We told them we liked the pizza at the restaurant, “The Fisherman’s Net.”

They said they liked Borobodur – where the monkeys live. I asked what they had. They’d enjoyed the chicken satay and the fries weren’t bad.

“Oh, so you didn’t have the monkey brain?” They refocused their collective gaze.

“We saw the monkeys,” he said.

“It’s expensive, but quite tasty,” I said.

“You’ve never had it?” Tracey asked.

“We’ve never had it. We thought they’re pets.”

“They are,” I said. “For a while.”

“My God,” she said. “We didn’t know they ate them.”

“Not every day,” I said. “Who could afford it?”

“Did you have it?” he asked.

“Of course.”

They left before we got the chance to ask if they’d ever tried human.

September 31

I had a reasonably decent tuna baguette at the Dive Indonesia restaurant, French fries, and very deep-fried egg noodles, which I didn’t know you could deep-fry. The beer veered wildly toward warm, and I realized why the waiter at the Borobodur, Gili Terawangan’s premiere resort, had bragged about his refrigeration. We sat on the floor on pillows at the Japanese-style restaurant next to two Ozzies, a Brit, and a Mercan who was too stoned to do much but motion for things. The Englishman said we ran into so many English because they don’t like England.

The meal stirred something in Tracey, so she ran down the street to the premiere resort, Vila Orubak, where they had nice toilets. I trailed 20 yards or so behind, and noticed men were much friendlier to her. They’d smile and say hello to her and wouldn’t give me a passing glance. People ask me what it’s like to be engaged to an international beauty queen. I tell them it’s not all glamour. The men don’t talk to me. The women don’t talk to me. It’s hard for me to be noticed at all, much less taken seriously, which is my life’s purpose. I say to them, that’s the cross I bear.

She knocked back a Kahlua and came out of the toilet exhilarated.

“Things are looking up,” she said, smiling.

“If you pay $15 for the dive,” the guy who worked there said, “I’ll give you the other dive.”

I finished my Johnnie Walker and said, “Okay.” We found a cidomo.

“Three thousand.”

“One thousand.”

“Two thousand.”

I started to walk off.

“Fifteen hundred.”

I kept going.

“Okay okay!”

We drove off, bouncing back home behind the pony-drawn cart, expecting apples to fly any moment, past the chow carts and bungalows and dive charts, kids playing in boxes, tourists in sarongs and new surfer shorts, the empty Warstel beer bottles and blowing trash, and goats gnawing on garbage, then on the edge of town past the hippie beach and shack restaurants with signs like “Rentsmask.” I noticed a man who was a woman in the company of women. He seemed to be completely accepted, dressed as they were, hair up, playing with children as mothers and men who dress like mothers do.

When we got back to Nusa Tiga we approached Gita, the only guy at our not-so- premiere resort who spoke English. He learned English working on a cruise ship in Canada – turns out the ocean is a great place to meet people.

“Why are there no dogs on the island?” I asked.

“They don’t like it here,” he said, grinning.

“No, really.”

“They die.”

“Really, no.”

“They don’t like salt water.”

It dawned on us that fresh water cost money that people weren’t willing or were unable to spend on dogs.

“How come we never see women swimming in the ocean?”

He smiled, that was a tough one.

“Religion?” Tracey asked.

“No,” he said, “They don’t like it.”

His uncle, the owner who always wore a fez and sat behind the desk smoking cloves said, “They did it already. Boring.”

“No,” we argued.

“Yes,” Gita said. “Make them feel like wasting time.”

“They’ve got plenty of time.”

“We have plenty of time,” the uncle said. And we didn’t think he spoke English.

“They have time for a swim,” I suggested.

“All those clothes,” Tracey said.

“Can you see the constellation Scorpio here?” I asked, flat-out stumping them.

“You can see Southern Cross,” Uncle said.

“We figured that out.”

“Seems like it would be northern hemisphere, the Romans and all that,” Uncle said.

“Greeks,” Gita said, “Orion’s down here. Some you can see from the north and the south.”

“Does the toilet water flush counter-clockwise?”

Gita didn’t know about that either. We were even more confused because Tracey’s dive instructor, Big Ben, said it went straight down at the equator.

Tracey and I played cards on the patio. The ants won.

She wondered who cleaned the room. I did. Why, didn’t they? I don’t know. Didn’t you ask them? Yes. How come they didn’t? You got a clean sheet. Yes. It’s hard to explain the Old Indonesian Run Around to folks who aren’t familiar with it. You’re not used to a smile at every question, as an answer, a means of reply, deny, and retry. I think it goes back to Dutch Colonialism. You can’t be made to do something someone thinks you can’t do.

I showered off and asked Tracey if she wanted me to disinfect the bathroom floor with my urine. She said no, but I was already doing it. She got perturbed so she hiked up her skirt, put one leg on the sink and made a face that was a cross between strain and a redneck mad as a nest of hornets under bear attack in a snowstorm on his day off. Then her weight forced the sink to buckle and hit the floor with a crash and the porcelain flew everywhere. I had to shampoo it out of my hair.

“I’m not going to tell Gita for you,” I said. “Like the time you sent me into the alley.”

Gita brought a man who sawed it off and took it away. They left the porcelain. That was pretty much the next-to-last straw for Nusa Tiga. The last straw was the uncooked lemon pancake. It was the last thing on the menu Tracey could eat, and she couldn’t eat that. The cat seemed to like it pretty well.

Our bill came to $47.50, with an exchange rate of 2,800 rupiahs to the dollar, which is bad. A good one would have saved us about $2.50 so we said, “Okay.”

I asked Gita if he needed a hammock.

“Oh, yes,” he said, and his face lit up like a red light outside a whorehouse. “Here’s your tip,” I said, and handed him the overly heavy, itchy $8 hammock I hadn’t liked very much and didn’t want to carry.

“Really? Oh thank you!” Happy as a frog in heat. “I need it to sleep between breakfast and lunch, I can put it right up there and keep an eye on things.”

“We really enjoyed Nusa Tiga,” I said, “See you someday.”

Which will never happen. I wonder if Gita ever saw anyone again. I wonder if it ever made him sad. Outside a man, his son, and their forlorn dust-covered pony waited in the shade with a cidomo. They helped with our backpacks, climbed in, and shook the reins. As we trotted off I turned to see if Gita even cared. It warmed my heart to see him on the front porch, holding up the hammock, waving.

“Terima kasih!” he called.

“Kembali!” I called back.

“Since when do you speak Indonesian?”

“Since I checked out.”

“Five minutes ago?”

“Sounds about right.”

“So it’s not hard.”

“No. It is. I’m just highly absorbent.”

“Is that so?”

“C’mon, you’ve met me. We know each other right? We’re getting married.”

“Oh God,” she said, looking at the empty expanse of powder blue ocean, “I totally forgot about that.”

“Understandable,” I said. “I would too if I were you. Listen, maybe we get off the cidomo and you go your way and I go mine…”

“Shut up! What’d he say?”

“Gita? Well, I guess because I gave him my cherished hammock—”

“The itchy one?”

“The one I spent an entire day softening up yes.”

“The heavy one you didn’t want to carry around?”

“Do you want to hear what he said or not?”

“Sure,” she said, and laid her head back on my arm. The sun flickered through the oaks on her face, lightly freckled etched perfection, and I spoke softly in her ear, “He said, I’m a true friend, generous, honorable, and noble, therefore God – I couldn’t quite catch which god, there are literally thousands – he’s Hindu, not Muslim so we have to keep that mum – but I’m fairly certain it’s an ancient fertility god or goddess, I have to be honest, the gender has me stumped – the stress was either on the sixth or seventh syllable, I’m still getting used to all the accent marks and subtleties of inflection – at any rate, this god or goddess, who’s particularly naughty, will bless my beautiful princess and me with children too numerous for math. Well, math is the literal translation.”

“Beautiful princess?”

“I assume he meant you.”

She looked up, her eyes deep, mysterious, and mischievous bordering on dangerous, like a forest watching you, and said, “Not unless his math is way off.”

She looked so beautiful in the dappled sun, I would have told her anything. “I’m paraphrasing.”

She nodded. “So what did you tell him?”

“I told him to make love to as many beautiful ladies in the hammock as I had.”

She slapped me playfully. “You better not have.”

“Actually I told him to make love to as many beautiful bules in the hammock as I had.”

“What’s a bule?”

“An albino.”

“You fucked an albino?”

“I’m afraid so honey.”

“When I was diving?”

“After.”

“Are you calling me an albino?”

“Gita’s valuable time the gift that gave me fluent Indonesian. I couldn’t crush his feelings into the proverbial ground with my verbal boot heel.”

The horse broke lung-blistering wind and apple dumplings cascaded into the ass bag a la mode.

“Horseshit!” Tracey gasped, laughing, “Exactly!”

“Poo-wee!” I yelled, “Pull over! We’re dying.”

The driver looked back, we’re pinching our noses, I’m thumbing over board nodding YES.

We jumped out before he rolled to a stop.

“What are you feeding this thing? Toxic waste?”

He didn’t seem to either understand or care.

“How much is it anyway?” I asked Tracey. “Maybe we should just walk from here.”

“I don’t want to walk,” Tracey said waving noxious fumes, “It’s gone. Some.”

“Berapa harga?” I asked.

“Three thousand,” he said in English.

“To the hotel?”

He nodded.

“One thousand,” I said.

“Two thousand.”

“Fifteen hundred.”

“Two thousand,” Tracey said. “He waited half an hour for us. That’s fine. I don’t want to carry my backpack all the way down there.”

It was sandy, midday, and a long way.

“Fine.”

I was so high from pony gas by the time we got there I handed him 1,500 rupiahs.

“No, two thousand,” he said.

“You can’t raise the fare after the trip,” I said, but he didn’t understand a word. He handed the money back to me and started off. I took out 500 and gave it to him and said, “I’ll never see you again,” but he didn’t know what I said.

I told Tracey what he’d done.

“We never said 1,500,” she said. “We agreed on 2,000 because he waited.” Maybe we never said 1,500. She was sure, I wasn’t, even though it wasn’t often I flat-out hallucinated. I felt bad. It was obvious.

“I shouldn’t be so sensitive,” I said.

“Yes you should,” she said, “that’s what I love about you.”

“I don’t like being a dick,” I said.

“I’d feel bad if I were you.”

“That’s an odd way of showing support.”

“I’m just telling you I understand. Look at this room. It’s clean, clean, clean.”

She sang a little song. “I love clean... clean, clean, clean. Look, the toilet flushes. Big, cushy, fresh towels under the sink.”

I noticed directions under the toilet seat lid. A person stands before the toilet. Another person sits on it. Tracey peeled off the sticker and stuck it on her journal. I prayed for the moron who wouldn’t find the directions they so desperately needed.

Minus directions, which would’ve been helpful for the faucet, flushing toilet, countertop, table, chairs, assorted surfaces, drawers, bed, pillows, blanket, sheets, ashtray, lamp, bath mat, ceiling fan, oven, plants, mirror, and floor the room had everything. It had marble floors, a fine mosquito net (no directions), a comfortable Western shitter, a dresser, big useless clay pots, a glass top desk, a couch, hanging rugs with woven dancing men, a not-too-terribly salty shower, a mirror over the sink (shaving!), plants in a rock garden in a bathroom that was meant to be outdoors, pyramid lampshades made from extinct animals, ivory frog ashtrays, crocodile bath mats, self-cleaning oven, turtle shell ceiling fan, and a porch with a table, and a wide lay-down couch with puffy pillows where I knew I’d learn a lot about the view – the heartbeat, rhythm, and circulatory system of main street, the endless horizon and shades of the sea, and the turtle-backed island Gili Meno that rises out of the Indian like the world turtle.

We celebrated by dropping off our laundry. Tracey went to dive class. I went back to the shop where we’d bought skirts for shorts – anything other than the one pair of cargo cut-offs I wore by the grace of safety pins and the friend that threw them away 8 years ago. The lady nursing the baby was there again nursing the baby.

I said hello, looked around, saw some I liked, enough, and tried them on. They didn’t make me look like a supermodel, but bad patterns can’t.

“How much?” I asked.

“Special price for you.”

“I knew that before I tried them on.”

She smiled. We liked each other. “I bought skirts, 36,000 for four, remember?”

“You got a good deal.”

“Not good for me.”

“Ok, how much for these?”

“Fifteen thousand.”

“Seven.”

“Fifteen.”

“You started at 15.”

“I sell them for 15.”

“That’s not your best price. I’ll give you eight.”

She smiled. “Fourteen.”

“Ten. That’s still a good deal for you.”

I pulled out a 10,000 note. “Ten.”

“Fourteen.”

“I don’t have it.” I double-checked my bag. One thousand. I gave it to her.

“Three more.”

“I don’t have it. You always take all my money.”

She looked at the bag, but my arm was over it. She looked at me looking at her, and we both smiled.

I pulled out another 1,000. “Twelve thousand,” I said.

“Fourteen.”

“Let me see.” I pulled out another 500.

“Only 3,000 more,” she said. I pulled out 100.

“Oh no,” she said.

I tried to cover up my 5,000’s, 10,000’s, and 20,000’s. I pulled out 200 more.

“That’s it,” I said, “That’s a good deal.”

“For you.”

“I think that’s fair. I came back didn’t I?”

“After three days.”

“So that’s good,” I said, “for you.”

“Better for you.”

She smiled and accepted it.

“You’re an excellent saleswoman.”

“Some day good, some day bad.”

“Today was good for you. You took all my money again.” We giggled. “I love shopping here.”

“You come back in three days,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said. “Selament tinggal.”

She got me and we both knew it. Then again, I didn’t have a baby to feed in a Third World country, and I was tired of wearing my underwear showing around town, even if they were boxers.

At 10 a.m., I’d missed the 9:30 boat to Gili Meno. They say it surpasses Gili Trawangan in boring quanta, but these islands are so small and hard to measure I had to see for myself. Then I missed Tracey’s dive boat too, so I wrote my grandmother a postcard and had an ice coffee. On returning to the premiere resort I ran into the morning’s driver. I said, “Permisi, this morning, 2,000, you were right, about going to Vila Orunbak.”

“You go?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I said, waved him off, and walked back. I lay on the patio’s itchy canvas couch for two hours writing this under forced listening conditions. Indoteen radio churned out inhumane, barbarous covers of Dire Straits, Eagles, Talking Heads and REM. Makes you batshit crazy.

Tracey was about to dive when I caught up with her at the shop. Big Ben, tall and sullen, looked at my card and asked why the shop where I was certified wasn’t printed on it. Because I forgot it. Good enough.

The last time I dove? January.

He nodded ok, walked off, and injected a thumb up his nostril, presumably to loosen the crust. I was intrigued and disgusted, but once I broke through the disgust barrier and he proceeded to excoriate, tweeze, and exorcise boogers with deft surgeon’s fingernails, I flat-out worshiped the man for his zero-fucks-given bravado. One flick of the thumb and he increases a bric-a-brac shop’s inventory. He’s Nietzsche’s übermensch, Tarzan, and Aquaman all rolled into one! I swear, if Big Ben had good hair, skin, or personality, I’d be jealous. I don’t see how Tracey or any woman would be able to resist that whole alpha male, he man, master of the universe, je ne sais quos laissez faire bon vivant thing he’s got going on there. Plus, he dives in a weenie-bikini, never smiles, and smells like sour milk. Thank Ganesh he found someplace that makes him so happy.

Speaking of which, every so often the other oddest thing happens. Seven men roll an iron telephone pole down the middle of the road. I don’t know if it’s the same one they roll back and forth just to have something to do or different ones because the Chinese are building a spy installation but I haven’t seen any Chinese although we’re a stone’s throw. Always seven, every couple of days, it’s just a random thing you see. Some push, some ride like Scots on a log at the Highland Games. How do they decide to push or to ride? Ingeniously. The guys who push leer at women the most. I guess they don’t have to watch where they’re walking. These guys, this team, The Brothers of the Pole, are also the only islanders I’ve ever seen leer at women, they eat them alive with their eyes, their eye mouths. It must have something to do with pushing a great big phallic symbol straight down through the middle of town. For example, when they encounter a cidomo with female passengers, they take their sweet time swiveling the pole around, a public act of sexual misconduct in itself. The drivers get so exasperated they reverse their pony, no small feat, and take the long way around through the neighborhoods.

The cidomo, that is, the pony and buggy, aren’t much bigger than the driver. Barring the fact that he’d have to walk, the only difference if passengers rode on the driver’s back is they’d be more comfortable.

Men take their sons around in the cidomos, showing them the ropes. I think they say, “I drive to the harbor, wait two hours, drive home, eat, and feed Shemp. Then things heat up. Are you ready for this? I drive back to the harbor and wait three hours. I have a snack at Theresa’s soup stand don’t tell your mother and don’t tell her I said not to or I’ll start bringing your little brother. I have to know I can trust you. This is the family business, and it’s a very big responsibility. It’s not like I just ride around all day having fun. This is our only source of income.”

“Besides the laundry mama takes in?”

“Yes.”

“Does mama make more than you do?”

“No! Yes.”

“Do you ever have passengers, papa?”

“Of course! I had one last month but the bastard tried to give me 1,500 for a 2,000 rupiah fare.”

“Was he a bule papa?”

“Yes. He was an albino son of bastard.”

“Is Shemp ok?”

“Wayan, the old gray mare is not what she used to be.”

“We should breed her Papa, then we will have puppies!”

Big Ben pretended not to notice when I put my wetsuit on backward. We went straight out – Tracey smiling, surprised to see me, and happy. She looked so voluptuous in her bathing suit. Her freckles affected me deeply. We dropped anchor just off the shore of Nusa Tiga. A sentimental shiver shook through me and I said so.

“I think we’re both sentimental,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think it’s great.” She rubbed my chest. “My man.” I still find myself shocked to be with such a beautiful woman, as in, what did I do to deserve this? I’ve learned to accept, not to question, some things. Go with it. Act natural. We suited up and I checked all over, having long forgotten the entire procedure.

“In PADI,” Ben explained, “blah blah blah....”

I tried to copy him, fall in line, but didn’t check air, weights, or buoyancy. We splashed backward into the cerulean sea and sank 15 feet and landed on the floor like the first men on the moon, kicking up sand that floated like powder in slow motion. I noticed the anchor was perfectly rooted in a big honking coral. Indos are seafarers, they spend a lot of time looking at water, but they don’t seem to think below the surface, beyond what can eat or be eaten. I suppose they could point out a thousand reasons I’m a dipshit. That’s the beauty of diversity.

Ben led us to the edge of the reef. The wall fell straight down 60 feet in a sensory assault and deep blue abyss. We descended. Never one to equalize easily or assimilate to pounding pressure well, I thought my head would implode. Then explode.

We saw a giant clam, purple and sensitive. Ben tried to lose his hand but failed. It’s hard to describe underwater as anything but neon wilderness, even though Nelson Algren applied it to the inner city. Somehow it works for both. Fins, stripes, spots, snouts, tentacles, all kinds of “things” as they say in science, the “stuff” of literature: octopus, moray eel, Lionfish, Trigger Clownfish, turtle, jellyfish, sea cucumber, cuttlefish, flatworm, and black-tipped reef shark. A veritable sushi den. You float and soar and inspect and say to your fiancé in sign language, fuck me here now yes why not, while trying to keep your head from exploding for 37 minutes so you can ascend and equalize. I floated upside down watching bubbles float into nebulousness, and Big Ben waggled his finger at me. My throbbing head was glad when we surfaced and Tracey took off her wetsuit. Her rack stuck out like gun barrels. I was awash with lust, inflamed passions, joie, and I couldn’t wait to get to Mount Traley.

Cruising in on seas a little rough, afternoon sun peaceful, I couldn’t help think of The Old Man and the Sea. The old man, the fishing pole, the fish, the hook – a perfect story – all the simplicity, depth, non-cushy romanticism, watery prismatic imagery – the struggle. I think I loved getting out on the water as much as diving. At the Blue Marlin Dive Shop I had a big beer and the best soup I ever had while the Counting Crows sang about someone 3,500 miles away. Not me. Never again.

I got the laundry and it smelled so sweet. The simple pleasures make life worth living. The complicated pleasures too, but it’s complex, and a long story. The perfect balance of simple and complicated pleasures can be found right here on the island of Gili Trawanga where the linguistic variations I submit for your consideration are indicative of cross-continental pollination, folksy and artificial flavoring, and the divinely inspired, touched, or possessed:

Sagittarius Restoran

Iguana Rest Bungalo

Pasic Putih Pondok Kayangan

groover (grouper)

Transpor?

Pondok Terawangan Losmen Eky

Conello Ice Cream

Wall’s, Want buy?

Pizza – fruiti alimare, Hawaii, Guatro Stagione, Alle Aceiugfio, Al Peperoni

Movies and Mushrooms

Rudy’s Party – You get drink, you get drunk, you fall down, no problem, don’t worry be happy, one love, no fuckin’ worry.

Leveraging the conversational vernacular of the people, “Rudy,” (be it person or brand persona) unequivocally nails the target audience between the eyes. If there’s ever been better brand positioning than “Movies and Mushrooms,” it may only be “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll” (which it must be noted exceeds twice the standard deviation). The call and response initiatives “Wall’s, Want buy?” and “Transpor?” violate the standard industry dictum that states thou shall not give the consumer a reason to say “no.” The gamble pays off, handsomely I might add, because done well, extremely well in the case here, intrigues, entices, and engages prospects as only true devotees of human nature and breakthrough innovators can. And do. “Conello Ice Cream” takes the cutesy cake, albeit a hollow victory in the shallow end. Genius or moronic, “groover” sells itself. “Pasic Putih Pondok Kayangan” and “Pondok Terawangan Losmen Eky” baffle me completely, and “Sagittarius Restoran” would win the Cannes Prix du PanderBear were it not for “Iguana Rest Bungalo,” whose imagery I find so inviting, I loathe myself for being such a sucker. I’d swallow my pride with some comfort food, probably in the way of pizza, but I can’t fathom what that would entail. And I do mean tail. So that these words may not fall upon deaf ears I shall metaphorically shout from the allegorical mountaintop that this remote backwater & international intersection is the ideal juxtaposition for the linguist who savors the sensual, delights in the phonemic pleasures that tingle the senses, and revels in the irreverent syllables that tantalize the tongue.

At the restaurant “Pondok Keyangan,” Jasmine cooked fish on an open grill by the road, reeling us right in. He introduced us to our fish – barracuda – an excellent choice for grilling.

“Trebelly,” he said. He loved it, it was his favorite. He also had a Styrofoam cooler full of groover. I think he meant grouper. We liked the overall approachability of the groover. It also seemed the distinctively friendliest, and it had the least flies vomiting on it, then eating their vomit. We took a seat under a low-thatched roof on a raised platform. We moved outside ‘cause no wind passed that way. A few English hippies sat at the next table with matted hair. They tried to explain why they didn’t eat meat. They were “vegans,” “vegetarians.” He sounded like Neil from The Young Ones. The boy-waiter smiled.

“Peanut oil?”

“No animal fat,” Neil said.

It was a difficult place for them to take a stand. Then they started eating each other’s face. From where I sat I could also see a French girl (she had to be French) picking the biggest nose in the world. Tracey mentioned the nose without any hint of suggestion from me.

“I want to watch,” Tracey said, so she ran to watch Jasmine. I watched kids dance in the wings to the electronic undulations of the stereo – the stars – the restaurant slowly filling.

“I ordered more food,” Tracey said upon returning, “Two crabs. When I was a girl in Texas they gave me crab after crab at our beach house.”

The fish was enormous, brimming in its entirety over the platter, smothered in garlic.

“Do you have a cracker?” I asked.

He brought a knife.

“A cracker?” As if repeating would instantly teach him English.

“How do you eat this?”

“Break it with your hands,” snap, he motioned.

“And? Bite through the shell?”

He shrugged yes, he shrugged he didn’t know, he shrugged The Old Indonesia Runaround his ancestors shrugged at the Dutch and offered a smile you couldn’t reject. We slobbered and drooled the fish and crab and hoovered those French Fries and downed that beer and looked into each other’s eyes as if it were the last day we’d live on Earth. The human brain works on energy levels and few folks find another whose waves have the same frequency. Plato thought people are like half a coin – looking for the other half broken (so to speak) in the same way. I’d had some bad fits, or not quite proper fits. Hard to know what to trust. Kind of like finding a life preserver when you’re floating in the middle of the ocean. My mom was in a real bad place once. I told her, just ‘cause you can’t see the other shore doesn’t mean it isn’t there anymore. Problem is, most folks float forever or moor up in the harbor where they’re safe but not happy. Like all the big things in life, all the things worth doing, you’ve got to wait and get hurt and get hurt and wait and... till it seems like there’s nothing worth looking for. And just when you’re not looking – smash – a bat to the back of the head. Shriek shriek shriek. You’ve fallen so hard you don’t ever want to get up. The stars are yours, the moon was placed there as a backdrop for you to stare into each other’s eyes, beaches spread out like blankets for your late-night love-making.

“Do you think there’s anything new under the sun?” I asked Tracey.

“Yes,” as in, duh.

“That’s stupid isn’t it?”

“Yes,” as in, duh.

“But people argue there are variations on old themes.”

“They’re dumb.”

I’m glad she has the sharpness of Occam’s Razor and the generosity of the Salvation Army. After gorging ourselves deliriously she fed the cats 10% of the groover. One cat looked dangerously close to death. Its eyes were sunken and watery. It looked like a junkie, and Tracey suggested it had kitty AIDS. She missed our cat Maggie Loony, she said. She’d saved her life at birth.

“If I could, I would take care of —” (I thought she’d say ‘everything on this island,’ or ‘Bali,’ or, far-reaching, ‘Indonesia’) “all the little animals in the world.”

I could imagine us having the largest animal farm in the world one day. Surrounded, like Papa himself, by hundreds of cats. At the restaurant, the other cats ate fiercely, jumped and in a flash stopped dead still – having eaten before I even saw the fish hit the ground. Near-Dead Kitty coughed, sputtered, huffed, and ate a tiny scrap that had catapulted out of the foray.

“Kitty AIDS,” she said. “Lots die.”

“Has there been much backlash from the cat community?”

To which she replied, “You’re a bastard.”

That’s when I noticed the napkins glowing pumpkin orange. The girl-waitress had blocked the wind with them for the candle, too closely. She was not quite sure what to do about the fire now. I guess that’s what the ex-pats mean when they say they’re ‘not problem-solvers.’

I dumped some water on it and smiled at her as it smoldered. She was glad to have one less thing to deal with in this career she never wanted in the first place, probably knew she was lucky to have, but loathed.

I watched a page blow out of a man’s book, and away, then back again, and away again. Summing up life.

We tipped the girl-waitress 1,000 rupiahs, which made her feel like she’d been to Graceland with Paul Simon.

October 1

The next day’s dive at Adam’s Reef, or Shark Point, depending on which dive company you went with, departed at 9:15.

While we waited, we sucked down a fat meal at our premiere resort waited upon by his majesty, #1 Boss, Sir Nyoeman (which means third born in Hindu Balinese). We’d eaten there the night before also, when Nyeoman was drunk on beer and vodka, but too shy to try Tracey’s nightcap of Kahlua. Until he tried it, then he loved it. This morning, he said he missed Kuta, the cars, the motorcycles, he liked the nightlife. There was none of that here. He served us aromatic Lombok coffee; eggs any style (scrambled or fried); bacon, ham, chicken sausage or cheese (any 2); and 5 kinds of bread (any 3). Tracey drank a pot of coffee. It was delicious, and Nyoeman hugged us when we gave him 2,000 rupiahs as though he were invited to be President of the United States of America or at least Premiere of Canada.

The bouncy waves of the high seas thrilled me. I lied down in Tracey’s lap and looked up at her mambo boobies – which thrilled me more. We sang “Ring of Fire.”

“I went down, down and the flames climbed higher, and it burned, burned, burned, that ring of fire...”

“You know June Carter wrote that, not Johnny.”

“Wonder how many things women did men got credit for?”

“Every person you see walking around.”

We joined Hasim, or as he called himself, “Sun,” pointing to the sky. Thought that’d be a great name for a boy.

There’s always a number’s joke when dealing with Indonesians. They say two, you say one, you agree to one-and-a-half. Then they say, “Good, two.” Or, if the price is 20, you say, “Good, two.” You tell the moneychanger that since they have all that money, they’re boss of the island, build big hotel, be even richer. They say they #2 boss, work for boss. Then they ask for a tip because they don’t get commissions.

“Why not?” you ask.

Lonely Planet says not to tell them about tipping. They’re afraid they might learn all about it and it might cost them another couple of bucks to write a book. Why would you want them to be able to feed their kids something better than the evil gravy Mie Goreng? Or cat skewers? Or maybe, and this is crazy, maybe they could even afford dogs. Maybe if they could afford poochies, we’d eat less.

I wondered if the men were gay because they walk arm-in-arm and hold each other around the back when they walk down the street.

We scuba dove, and once under, my temple didn’t crack like it had. We floated, Tracey, Marina, Sun, and I, along the wall. Coral, fish, spots, stripes, rock fish, blue fish, tiger fish, yellow fish... floating weightless... Four feet of linked jellyfish like a plastic train in lingerie. Sun reached into the coral and pulled out a piece of trash. Tracey motioned wiping tears. My God, I thought, it’s a diaper! Then I saw it was a plastic bag.

Tracey grabbed her stomach and gave the international barf signal. She slowed, sluggish, sinking. I worried, waited. She motioned, “Okay” to me, and “Okay” to Sun.

I stopped worrying when I saw extending from the imaginary line extending from Sun’s finger a White-Tipped Reef Shark. I went to the bottom and lay flat. Tracey had told me they come up from under like Jaws. My breathing speeded up – blood coursing – heart pounding. We lay on the bottom till it saw something off in the nether blue and wriggled away. The adrenaline rush from swimming with a man-eating shark is better than cocaine.

When we left Gili Trawangan the next day, I asked the ticket agent at the ferry, “Do you accept lempira? Honduran lempira?”

“Sir?”

“From Honduras.”

Tracey smacked me in the arm.

“Luggage sir?”

“No thanks, I have some.”

“He says it doesn’t cost anything to take our bags for us,” Tracey said.

“What?!”

“You can pay 10,000 if you want,” the man said.

“Give you receipt from office. Special price.”

“For me? You big boss maybe.”

“Maybe I am.”

“What will you be serving for dinner tonight?”

“No dinner.”

“Our favorite is seafood.”

He pointed to a sign that read, “Seafood 200m↑.”

“How far is that in feet?” Tracey asked.

“Six hundred.”

“You don’t have time sir. Boarding 5 minutes.”

“Can you bring it to me?”

“Next time sir.”

“I’ll come back. Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”

We turned away, and I said to Tracey, “They’ve never done that before.”

Two women looked at a man’s hammock.

“How much?” I asked.

“Thirty-five thousand.”

Been through that, they could be had for a lot less, but I didn’t blow his sale.

“You want?” the gent at the batik agents asked.

“How much for everything?”

“Nooooo!” He laughed.

“All or nothing.”

“Just one, sir?”

“I’ve got a guy over there who will load it all onto the boat for me,” I said.

“How about necklace?”

“She doesn’t like pearls,” I said and walked away.

We took the Albatross boat, which was open and uncramped. It was rough, but not as bad as the boat over. Two Englishmen from Hampshire said they were there four years ago and a public boat had sunk – everyone survived – but the backpacks – bloop bloop bloop.

Tracey got carsick in the bemo to Sengigi along the serpentine road edging the cliffs and the shore. The guy nearly ran down children and baby chicks. Even though they’d dumped tons of concrete into potholes, it didn’t make any difference. One of the Brits was a travel agent. He heard of my company, Trek America and asked, “Do you get bored with it?”

“No, but when you travel, you learn a lot about people, and some people I don’t want to learn a lot about. Fred the Nazi. He counted toilet paper sheets for a powerful Swiss concern. He called the Japanese girls Suzuki and Yamaha. They cried. He yelled at people for eating turkey before ham. Tracey was on the trip, he got in her face, said she only had one-thirteenth of me and I dropped him off at a motel with no vacancy in Stanley, Idaho. His head nearly exploded. I thought he was gonna pull a knife of me. Kept his hand in his backpack pocked the whole 12 miles from the campground.”

The public bemo picked us up in Sengigi, and for 12,000 it nearly killed us with carbon monoxide. It wasn’t until I felt sick and sleepy till we realized it. Tracey was feeling that way regularly, but for me to feel like that was a different matter. The little sneak refused to give me 2,000 change at the harbor after nearly killing us.

“Broke,” they said.

“Take that 2,000 and fix that thing,” I said. “We nearly vomited.”

They didn’t understand.

“You know, barf!”

Plus I thought my head was dichotomizing. Maybe the carbo-mono-bends.

We were going to take the public ferry but decided with our run of luck that day to bail on it, so we took the Mabua Express and high-tailed it for Dalia’s in case we needed a decompression chamber.

October 2

Seminyak

Sibudiroute, or Selat – pasar (market) Agung, or Tintagarugga – Water Palace

Somehow we managed to both wake up on the wrong side of the bed. The plan had been to climb Gunung Agung for two weeks, but that morning I perused Dalia’s Bali Lonely Planet Guide from 1989 and came across a traveler’s harrowing account of the climb – clinging to roots, rocks turning to powder, people turning back. It could’ve been Everest. He said he was glad but he wouldn’t do it again if you paid him. I couldn’t have paid Tracey. Her anger boiled to the surface over having to do lots and lots of things on my agenda. We finally settled on Lake Batur – a volcano and lake rolled into one.

At the travel agents they said the shuttle to Batur had left an hour earlier – at 9 a.m. He said, smoking and smiling, traffic oppressive on Seminyak’s main street, horns drowning out his voice, “You go to Ubud – take bemo from there – maybe at 11. Maybe 15 minutes late.”

At 11 we changed money with the nice lady at the counter and waited for the bemo, and waited, and waited. The lady nursed her baby. Forty-five minutes later the guy says, “Oh, please don’t angry, it here.”

We walked up, saying no problem, and the professional wrestler got out of the driver’s seat and came around. When he opened the door it was pretty clear there was room for nothing.

“Go to back,” he ordered.

“No, move luggage, and we sit in those front seats.”

“No. Go to back now. More to get.”

“We’re not getting in there. There’s not enough room.”

“Go!”

Slam, bang, gone.

“What now?” the man said, watching the bemo drive off.

“Well, how about you give us our money and we’ll go on our merry way?”

“You rent car?”

“Not on your life.”

“Take bemo to Ubud?”

“Yes. But can you guarantee it won’t be like that one?”

“Very special price, 8,000.”

“No, thank you.”

“Maybe you want reserve private car, luxury, with all to yourself.”

“No, I just want my money back.”

“What do we do?” Tracey asked.

“You don’t want?” the man asked.

“The problem,” I said, “is between you and that company, not you and I, so you give me my money, and take it up with them.”

He pulled the money out of his pocket and said, “There is cancellation fee.”

“How much?”

He pulled 5,000 aside.

I said, taking the 5 and 10 out of his hands and putting them in my pocket, “How about none?”

He laughed, showed his friend his empty hands, and we walked out.

Had I known that was the beginning of our hassles that day, I would’ve gone back to Dalia’s and climbed back in the wrong side of the bed.

The fella at Krakatoa travel agent advised us to take a taxi to Batubulan, halfway to Ubud, and catch the public bus from there.

The first taxi driver didn’t have a meter. We were hot. Annoyed. I let it go.

“Why didn’t you just bargain and take it if it wasn’t unreasonable?” Tracey asked.

“I don’t know what reasonable is.”

Besides, I hated getting screwed when I didn’t have to. Another taxi driver with a meter said you want a meter or 25,000. I’ll take what’s behind curtain #2, Monty. The meter. It came to 15,000 with a little tip for the honking-obsessive little dude who didn’t have us out of the car at the bus station by the time he was cutting deals with the bus drivers over us.

“Where’s the ticket office?”

Five guys bypassed us to the bus but one said 3,000 for two.

“Where the ticket office?”

They didn’t know that. I went to the next bus.

“How much to Ubud?”

“Five thousand.”

“My god.”

I went back and tried to ask the bus driver how much. I caught the dude behind me holding up three fingers.

“It’s only a dollar,” Tracey said.

“BUT IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER.”

“There are no seats,” Tracey said.

“We want seats,” I said to the driver.

He shooed people out of seats and whisked our backpacks off to the roof -- with our green money bag in it.

As we pulled out Tracey asked, “Did you see them put our backpacks on the roof?”

“I thought I did.” I thought I had. Did I? “I’ll check when we stop.”

“It’ll be long gone by then.”

Was it hot? Duh. Was Gianyar Hades? Possibly. Did the guy standing up stare at Tracey’s breasts the whole way? Definitely. He was like a dog staring at you when you eat. You look at him and he looks away, as if to say, I wasn’t looking at you, then when you turn your attention away he’s got his eyes on your potatoes. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can shoot it and get a new one.

An eight-year-old boy lit up a cigarette in the seat behind us. The guy in the seat in front of us lit a cigarette. Tracey looked like she did at Nusa Tiga in the cold shower with shampoo in her eyes and opened them to rinse and found out it was also salt water. The more I fanned the smoke back at the kid, the more he blew it at us. It was reasonably scalding the rest of the way, then they threw our bags off the roof in a town on the edge of a crater rim. Batur.

What had once been a volcano the size of Manhattan had left a crater 5 or 6 miles in diameter, with Mount Batur to the west in the bed of the crater and Lake Batur in the crater to the east. I barely had time for my jaw to drop when a man with a moustache and feathered hair like we wore back home in the early Eighties came up and told us to go to his hotel. I ignored him and walked to a sign that read Visitor Information in letters about as official as they get here, but there was nothing helpful there. When I turned around the guy was in my face again and there were others too clamoring to get past him.

“I just want to get away from these people for a little while,” I told Tracey.

You could say that right in front of some Indonesians and they won’t get it even if they speak English. Somehow you’re not talking to them. When you say, “Leave me alone,” they hear, “Leave me alone later and hassle me now.” We climbed the steep stair to the “Restoran” on the edge of the cliff and got away. From the Restoran we could see other villages around the lakes, and beyond the crater the sea glistened on to Lombok, and to the east Mount Agung (Agung means mountain) emanated holy majesty.

The buffet looked tired as death. “The pork scares me,” Tracey said. “Why?”

“Because I haven’t seen any pigs.”

“It’s probably dog.”

“I haven’t seen any dogs either.”

“There you go.”

We ordered a la carte Ramen noodles as the entire staff came out of the kitchen to stare at us. Then Wayan, a first-born, explained the whole name thing to us again. We figured we’d go to the far village – Air Panas or Thintha or Tayah Bangkah – whatever you want to call it – and hit the hot springs and climb Mount Batur. We asked two Germans how to get down there. Public bus, they said. Okay, we could do that. When we hit the streets they were on us again like gnats in summertime.

“No thank you. No, please. No.”

The guy with the Chachi haircut and Charles Bronson moustache descended on us again. I tried to talk to the public bemo driver.

Tracey came up to me and said, “Let’s go with this guy. We’ll look at his hotel, if we stay the ride’s free, if not we pay 1,000 each.”

“Is it in Air Panas?”

“I don’t know, I think so.”

“Alright, but I get bad vibes off this guy.”

On the descent to the crater floor, a Balinese couple with a small boy sat in the back.

“Where are you from?” the man asked.

If you go to Bali, expect to be asked this as much as to buy something. They’ve got a way of making you feel obliged to buy something. “Sure,” you might say, “I’d love to pay a few extra dollars for no perfectly good reason. Why, I feel obliged to.”

The man obviously loved his wife and he loved their son. Tracey told me to give him the racecar I brought to give to some little kid. When I did, they held up his thumbs in the thumbs-up position. We got to Charles Bronson’s hotel, looked at the drab rooms, were told the clear advantages, the closeness of Mount Batur, the lake, the hot springs, other places stunk, they were terrible.

“I just want to leave,” I told Mr. Bronson, smiling. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

Five guys crowded around us in the parking lot and it dawned on me why Lonely Planet called these the pushiest people in Bali, maybe on the whole entire lonely planet.

“Let’s go check out the hot springs,” I said to Tracey.

“Don’t go there, run down, nobody like,” some guy said. “Pay $5 just to enter.”

“How can we leave?” I asked.

“Public bemo.”

“Walk. Not far.”

“You pay us.”

“How much to take us there?”

“One million.” They were only kind of kidding.

“How much you pay?”

“One thousand more.”

“No,” the fat, slouchy guy looking like a Chico said. He was the boss’s whipping boy. “Seven, very far.”

An English girl came down the stairs and asked how we were.

“Terrible,” Tracey said. “You caught us at a bad time. We got manipulated by this guy and we can’t get away. He’s making it very difficult.”

“No difficult,” he said.

“We just want to leave. It’s one hassle after another.”

“I just got here,” she said, “and didn’t know how much it should be.”

We talked another minute, she wished us good luck, and walked to her Jeep. I ran over to her and asked, “If there’s any way you could take us to the next village we could give you some money and we’d really appreciate it.”

“That wouldn’t be necessary but I have to see about my boyfriend Nigel. If you’re still here in a few minutes, I’ll take you.”

“Thank you.”

She drove off, and they crowded around us again – talking about us in Indonesian. I finally got Chico aside and said, “Alright, six you little bastard, let’s go.”

“Okay.”

We climbed in the back of his car, anything to escape these predators, and who jumps in the passenger seat but Charles himself. We couldn’t get away from him. They talked about us and laughed and Tracey saw me seething and said, “Let’s just change the energy in here.”

We asked them to take us to Balai Seni Toyabungkash Art Center. On the way, the black lava fields looked like Craters of the Moon National Monument, and we could’ve been in Idaho. The “art center” had fallen on hard times since ’89 when the Lonely Planet Guide sang its praises. Instead, we tried another hotel. Charles ran ahead of us and talked to the proprietor who showed us a dark and filthy room that hadn’t seen better days for a very long time ago.

“How much?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Thirty thousand.”

Were they so out of touch? What had Charles told them? Why? We slipped out the front and a roach flew in. The proprietor scooted it with his foot laughing – and when he couldn’t get it he switched the baby to his other arm and picked it up.

“No, no, no,” I said.

“Not dangerous,” the man said. He kept laughing. Roaches were just hilarious. Walking down the road Charles followed us – past the hot springs and pool.

“We just want to be left alone,” I said. “Please.”

“I know you honeymoon on Bali and you want be left alone, but I have bungalow on lake to show you.”

We looked and they were alright. I turned around and there skulked Charles – as if he’d brought us – still trying to get a commission for existing in proximity to us. The rooms started at $25 U.S., and finished at $12 – but Charles was talking the guy into raising the prices on us so we left. Another guy followed, now we had three strays.

“You want 10,000, go here.”

“You want 15,000, go here.”

“Here?”

“Maybe there.”

“What you want?”

“I want you to go away!” He followed. As we passed, people told us to come and look.

“Want accommodation?”

“Room?”

I felt like a piece of fish dangling in front of a room full of starving cats, all of them yowling. I looked back and there he was – our tail. We went into the spa. He followed. We asked the ticket agents at the spa if they had rooms.

“We’ll bring our entourage.”

“Why don’t you all come?” I asked three people innocently sitting at a table, “Everyone else is.”

“This guy won’t leave us alone,” we told the ticket agent who led us through a big, unfinished room, upstairs, and out the spa to some rooms. He smiled. They were probably cousins. I could tell Tracey couldn’t take much more and I was about to hit someone. The rooms were old and now that Charles had a word in Indonesian with the people from the spa, the prices were too high for what they were. We went back out to the street, and a guy on a moped pulled up and said he had a place so we looked at it. Charles skulked behind us as well as the first hotel guy who I’d come to loathe as well. This guy’s place was piss.

“More in back,” he said. I looked around the corner and saw a Third World nightmare.

“No, thank you.”

We shot out to the street.

“Let’s go to ‘Under the Volcano,’ across the street,” I said.

No one was hustling there, and they had a compound. These three guys couldn’t trail us in. The kid was nice, the bungalows constructed out of black volcanic rock, elangs under corrugated-iron roofs. Palms, pines, and bougainvillea grew in the yard. The price, 10,000. Charles Bronson wouldn’t get a commission and neither would his bitch. We picked a room and collapsed on the bed. I was afraid they might break into our room – steal our stuff. They thought we were loaded – they’d told everyone else to jack up the prices – tried to fix the game. We hadn’t been left alone since we left Dalia’s. The whole day was hassle after hassle. I promised her we’d rest more in Thailand. It wouldn’t happen, but luckily you don’t know the future or you wouldn’t do most of the things you do in life.

I went down to the store at the office to get a beer and when I came out Bronson was there beckoning to me from the street.

“Hey! You climb Mount Batur! I take you!”

“Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!”

“If it hurt his feelings,” I told Tracey back in the room, “good.”

We made arrangements through the courteous staff at Under the Volcano. We’d leave at 4 a.m. with Nyeoman to climb Mount Batur. We paid $30 U.S., far too much, and didn’t bargain one penny.

October 3

Three a.m. rolled around mid-dream. I was floating down a river in a cave.

Nyeoman handed us flashlights and led the way through the darkness. Tracey got tired pretty quick. The trail passed through a pine forest and the cool air smelled of it. I could’ve been in Georgia in October. I thought of days I hadn’t thought of in years. It’s strange to grow up in a place for years and hardly go back there. To know every rock and root and then not know them at all...

I thought I heard voices. Bronson come with Chico to rob us with a knife, kill me, rape Tracey. It was Nyeoman singing. Tracey had a tough time and wondered frequently aloud how far was it, how long it would take, why people did this, why we were doing this. She hung in there, even when I wasn’t sure she would. We broke the tree line in about an hour, and the sun came up before we reached the summit – over the lake and the mountain on the other side, and Gunung Agung hovering directly behind us rosy purple in the horizon light. Off in the ocean, Lombok. The sun broke over Mount Rastamijani – a three-day trek to the summit. I used Tracey’s frequent stops to take pictures.

At one point on the way up I’d given Tracey the “keep your mind on the top and don’t think about the steps in between” speech, but the chips were down.

Nyoeman said cheerily, “I think going to beautiful sunrise today.” Tracey perked up, “Okay. Let’s go.”

At the summit, we found a zoo. Half a dozen Westerners drank tea as an Indonesian support staff of about 20 bustled around makeshift kitchens. The sun had climbed a bit now and the 360-degree view held the immediate crater, covered in flora but smoldering in places, collapsed on one side, lava flows from 1917 (hitting at least 1000 people, 20,000 homes, and 2,000 temples), 1926, and 1994. Nyoeman greeted his brother, also a guide, and many friends. A boy brought me coffee. He had on a green jacket and trousers, which he had a hole in so that you could see his butt crack. He was in flip-flops. He said shyly that he had climbed the mountain in them. Tracey had a Sprite to settle her stomach, which had threatened to blow the entire ascent. Might’ve been the fried potatoes dipped in salt for dinner – there were few things she found appealing after two weeks of alternating between nausea and constipation.

Nyoeman put eggs and bananas in a fissure on the side of the cliff-wall. The lake glittered with the sun above it and Lombok disappeared in a morning haze. Gunung Agung called from afar, “C’mon, you know you want to.” The locals were friendly, asking where we came from, exchanging openly. They went up at 3 a.m. to get here for the hikers. They made strong coffee and tea, and many wore flip-flops. That was a hell of a climb to sell a few cups of coffee. Tracey asked Ketut, the boy, what size shoes he wore. He didn’t know so she measured about the size of a Sprite bottle. Her boots were killing her, she would’ve traded if they’d fit.

Nyoeman took the eggs and bananas out of the fissure with steam coming up all around. The mountain could’ve blown at any time. I stuck my hand in there when he was done – oven-hot. Not only did he have infinite patience and unsurpassable friendliness, but he made a mean hard-boiled egg and banana sandwich.

When we said goodbye to the group, they thanked us profusely and waved for a while as Tracey, Nyoeman, and I circumnavigated the trail around the narrow crater rim. Along the way we stopped at a place where the heat coming through was so strong it created a microcosmic environment with an overhang of plants. Someone had rigged a sail so it caught the steam. At the end of the sail, water dripped into plastic water bottles that had been slashed in half. We washed our hands and faces with the holy water. The path turned steep but sandy so we ran down the slope like you would in snow. At the bottom of the highest crater, there was a building with separate booths, white flags, a courtyard, and benches.

“What is this place for?” I asked.

“To sell tourists Coke,” Nyoeman said.

All the stalls were closed. No Coke would pass hands. Farther down, still above tree line, it turned rough. Tracey’s legs were buckling and she wanted to know how far every 50 feet. I had a vision she’d fall and break her neck and there was nothing I could do. Then she screamed and I turned just in time to see her go down. I dropped the pack and ran to her. She had blisters, wanted to throw up, and couldn’t feel her legs, but besides that she was fine. I wondered if we’d ever do something like that again. I loved hiking the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Yosemite, the Rockies. I wanted to show her so much.

December 4

The next day, we hired a private bemo to take us to the north coast of Bali. Wayan brought us there for 55,000 rupiahs – like everything in Batur or Niagara Falls or Paris, overpriced. Over the mountain roads he took considerable care. He said Americans were friendly, Ozzies and English too. French and Germans, never happy, always talking, always complaining.”

Wayan had three kids, two of which were girls in high school, and a boy in elementary school. Used to be a guide but too much competition – kids need all he can get. I quit worrying about the $15 we paid him to get there. Even though I was 20 grand in debt from three straight years of travel, I guessed I’d make it back easier than he would. One place I saw women carrying concrete on their heads for men to fix the road.

“My God, now I’ve seen it all,” I told Tracey (although we hadn’t been to Bangkok yet). “See, the men are the thinkers, the planners.” Always we saw the women working – the men cutting deals, sitting at a desk, table, bar. They must’ve been real poor to balance gravel on their heads.

Wayan kept asking us to shut the windows. He said, “Police working license to drive no for tourists.” We narrowly escaped justice.

“Do the police do anything good?” Tracey asked.

“They take money for government,” he said.

“No, good for people. Oh no,” he said as if 1+ 1 = 2 don’t you know? We’d heard on Mount Batur from some Englishmen that you could swim with dolphins at Lovina – the next town from Kalibukbuk where we were.

Tracey lay on top of me naked in a bed with clean sheets in our new room at the Hotel Kalibukbuk. She said part of her feeling so bad on the hike had been because she felt like a disappointment to me.

“You don’t go out the first time and run the Boston Marathon,” I said, “You train, do more, go further and farther. And sometimes, when I want to go climb a mountain, let me go. Remember, patience comes to those who wait.”

“I want to be as good to you as you are to me.”

“Good luck.”

She washed in a clean bathtub – all she ever wanted – a clean bathtub. I looked out to sea from our second-story waterfront hotel. Then we made love. All the harbored anxiety and frustration I carried fell away. I didn’t see where it went.

Here we are. We love the room, the big bed, AIR CONDITIONING, but there are lots of Germans. Is it true, the stereotypes? That you’re ugly and smelly, rude and cheap, that you put people in gas ovens? The Germans made fun of the hawkers in the restaurant. “Vas is your name?” You had to ignore them and their smoke, and the sellers on the beach 10 yards away who came up to the fence.

“What’s your name?” they shouted. “Tracey.”

“Oh boy, now they have your name.”

“And you?”

“Tell them.”

“Jason! Now they have mine.”

“You shop!” they called.

“No thank you.”

“I’m Annie – see you tomorrow.”

“Not if I see you first! I’m going to tell them my name is Evil.”

I sat on the porch that night watching lizards eat the bugs around the porch light.

Tracey told me they even eat each other. Is nothing sacred? A moth fluttered into the picture adding real excitement. The biggest lizard, Darwin’s Chosen One, looked like the favorite for the moth dinner until an underdog on the sidelines had it fly into its jaws, proving Darwin completely wrong. A flying beetle hit the floor and a lizard tried to bite its head off but failed and ran away in shame. It couldn’t escape the tile patio floor though – too sticky – even though they could lie on the ceiling. The beetle finally tipped back over and after flying into the window several times got into the yard where a swooping bat ate it. The struggle of life is all around us.

October 5

The Germans invaded and occupied. But you know, it’s not their cruel humor, joylessness de vivre, or utter lack of fashion sense, what I deplore is the way they treat the locals. After the dolphin chases this morning (50 boats chased and corralled a school of dolphins, terrorizing them for an hour), and after snorkeling where I glanced at the coral and stared at Tracey’s body, I thanked our “captain,” and said, “I bet you do this every day.”

Then the German guy piped up, “They have life of fun, but do not earn as much as we do. Hahahahaha.”

I bet German comedians are a real hoot. His wife couldn’t swim and held onto the outrigger. “She doesn’t need the fins,” he told us.

We let the Germans go to the front of the line at breakfast so they could get the tables in front and buy things offered over the wall. Then we heard a little voice say, “Tracey, good morning.”

“No, Annie, we aren’t old friends, I’m not going to buy that butterfly sarong from you. Oh say, have you got any knock-off Disney crap?”

My lemon pancake was delicious and nearly cooked, but the condensed milk offered a sweetness to the scrambled eggs Tracey couldn’t abide by. She felt betrayed by an old friend. She tried to poop when we got back to the room, and I rooted for her, but nothing came of it. She’s been once in at least a week.

We slept all day and went to eat about two. They brought it at three. Spaghetti Bolognese. The red, meaty sauce sweet and unidentifiable. The pasta, like no other in the world.

Overhead played Indonesian television, which consists of hand-held cameras, men arguing and throwing very fake punches while pretty women over-gasp. Sometimes a woman dies and comes back to life making her prince very happy but then is blind and has the magical ability to send a third character into the sky and through primitive special effects a god rejects him and sends him back to Earth where everyone finds his return amusing.

We came back and slept some more and walked down the beach at sunset, refusing to buy handmade paintings, carved dolphins, sarongs, magic mushrooms, shells, Bali girls, and trips to see dolphins get terrorized. We passed people on their way home saying hello, “good-evening,” looking forward to dinner, putting the kids down, holding each other, and making the world a little better place.

Their homes were made of the woven wood we use for hand-fans in the States, lean-to’s, shelters a storm would toss like trash. Boats lined up along the shore and tall palms silhouetting the scenario conjured images from everything I’d ever seen or read about the South Pacific.

At the next table at dinner, Americans, a German, and a Swiss were talking about how important travel is, how it’s real life, opens your horizons, your mind, they tell their friends to travel, Europe isn’t real life, or America, they remembered teachers who’d traveled to Greece and brought back a doll, and to France. Remedial Conversation 101. I don’t travel to get enlightened by other tourists, I travel to piss on peasants, orphans if at all possible. Talk about opening your horizons.

Under the moon and stars, we got a ride back with a nice man in the back of a mini-pick-up they call a tung-tung. I don’t know why. Up on the mountain, lights glimmered from fires as families lay down to improve their experience on this planet. The driver overtook on turns, bridges, and by a school in a crowded village. We weren’t in that big of a hurry.

October 6

Indonesians offer to wash your “syaks.” They pick their noses often and publicly. They honk more than they brake. They dress statues like Italian waiters, especially at bridges. They ride scooters with plastic Nazi helmets. They wear No Fear t-shirts. Men hug, caress and fondle each other, and hold hands. They put offerings in front of every doorway, and it’s an insult to walk around with one stuck to your foot.

The mountains between Kalibukbuk and Ubud were cool, with lush forests and ten-foot-high ferns supported by immense root structures. You could look out from the van across Bali’s tropical paradise, terraced emerald fields, and palms to forever. I could’ve lived there. Some bamboo, as Algren put it. Settle into the kind of area you’d never hear English again, all because of the air. We had the whole backseat to ourselves, four wide, and Tracey slept while I looked out the window in wide-eyed amazement. How this island got so green and culturally advanced, making Lombok, Sumbawa, and Komodo, Isle of Dragons, looking so lack-luster, may be attributed to rain. Rain, river, agriculture, sustenance, free time, art, or hot and parched, with 8-foot draconic killing machines? Maybe some of the difference is Hindu vs. Muslim.

Two Aussies boarded the bemo and the Germans played musical chairs to redistribute the wealth. A seven-foot guy in travel fatigues kicked the girl out of a seat because he said he wanted to sit by his wife who he didn’t talk to for the next two hours. She sat in front of me, staring listlessly.

I told the Aussie fellow I’d slide, he could have the corner. They came from Perth, the end of the world, he said.

“How did your ancestors get there?” I asked.

“Shackles,” he said.

“Still have the scars,” his wife said. “But you can’t see the scars.”

His name was Bruce and hers was Sheila.

“Do you know where you can swim with dolphins?” Tracey wanted to know.

“Oh, yeah, just up the way from Perth.”

“We’re going to Sydney.”

“’Fraid not mate.” When did we mate? “We’ve got poisonous sea snakes, spiders, sea wraps like jellyfish, they are jelly fish, a lot like jellyfish, if they sting you, you’re done for, sharks, and further up, crocs.”

“Why didn’t we go there?” Tracey asked.

“I didn’t have the information then. And we have friends in Sydney.”

“Perth is great if you like clean beaches.”

“We do.”

“And diving.”

“We do.”

“But it’s boring.”

“Great for water sports I bet.”

“Oh yeah. Not much else.”

For about $500 U.S., Bruce and Sheila had a three-hour flight and five nights accommodation in Sanua, down by Denpasar, not their thing. “I like rice paddies,” Bruce said.

They were heading off to look at rice paddies. We talked about the States and I told them how to do it, and gave ‘em our address. Promised to go and freeload on our Big Australia Trip, someday.

Tracey banged her knee climbing out of the van and cursed in the street for a while, then we made our way to Gusti’s and loved the ride so much, we paid too much for it, 35,000 rupiahs, or $10. Okay, $5 each. The thing is, you say, $2 here, $4 there, $10 every now and then. Soon you’re nickel and dimed to “bankroot” when you thought everything was cheap.

We sat on our porch at Gusti’s and had coffee, fruit salad, jaffies, and a spectacular show of five guys catching a duck in the temple pond. I thought it was to get something off its wing, but it wasn’t their duck. A man went off with it. Today’s duck is tomorrow’s special.

October 7

Dalia’s cat had five kittens, all alive. Even the babies had babies while we were gone. Tracey had pulled our cat Maggie Loonie out of her mother, Claire de Lune, unwrapped the umbilical cord from around her neck, and massaged her to start her breathing. They’re nursing. Natural selection. The little girl got it good. She’s tried, she’s okay, she yowled all night, climbed under the covers and wouldn’t leave Dalia alone, as of 11 a.m. Tracey thinks there’s one more in there.

Tracey’s on a cute dress tour of Southeast Asia. I like masks. The market sellers sold batik, sarongs, dresses, t-shirts, handmade baskets, paintings, you want, you buy... I found a guy who sold masks and statues. Flying lady with breasts, 25,000 rupees, with comb and mirror, knife, matching man with cork and balls, flying frogs to hang from the ceiling, bats and cats with wings, dragons, barong masks, Buddhas, wicked monkeys, evil spirits, all manner of beasts and beauties. Frog flying with the hairless chest, Tracey’s favorite. I liked a Valkyrie descending with breasts and knife and teeth barred with a maniacal twinkle in her black eyes, the perfect gift for grandma. Tracey dragged me out and told me it was desperate – she might die. We found a restaurant and located the toilet for her – then I got a beer till she emerged. In the market ladies nearly beat her up to buy a dress. She changed her mind and it nearly spelled certain death.

“You make price!”

“You buy!”

“You promise!”

I laughed in the lady’s face, which she thought was real funny. I beat the other lady down to 14,000 and she acted like I was kicking her puppies the whole time. After she capitulated and I gave her the money she smiled. It’s like fencing and good sportsmanship. She said have a nice day. I wanted one more mask before we went back to the spa. It had three faces, three colors, four eyes, shared split personalities. Ideal for that special someone with same.

“How much?”

“Seventy-five thousand.”

“Hahahahaha.”

“What price?”

“Twenty.”

It was his turn to laugh.

“Seventy.”

“Okay. Twenty.”

“Haha.”

“Good for me, 65.”

“Bankroot,” I said.

“No, you want bankroot to me. What’s your best price?”

“Twenty.”

“Ha.”

If you take their cool out from under them, they can’t fight. I picked it off the wall and turned it over.

“This has been sitting here forever.”

He brushed the cobwebs off it. “No problem.”

“You might as well get something instead of nothing.” I pulled out two tens.

“How about 20,000?”

“Good for you, not for me. Morning price, 55,000.”

“Or,” I said, “Twenty thousand.”

“What is your last price?”

“Twenty.”

“Fifty.”

“Since today is Thursday, I’ll give you, say, 20.” Another upper cut, he reeled.

“You want bankroot for me, bad for me.”

“Alright, alright,” I said, “How about, 20?”

“You can buy for 20,” he said as he showed me a little mask, the painting tight and unfree. I liked them dinghy, loose.

“Ha!” That meant, I need that like a hole in the head, why would I care for such fecal matter, and, who in their right mind would buy such a thing from a curd like you? I wouldn’t wish that on a herpes cell.

Tracey came up and said, “Let’s go.”

I walked off, leaving him in a rain of self-doubt and despair.

“Okay okay!” he called.

Okay, what? I wondered. More runaround?

“Okay, twenty,” he said.

We exchanged money and mask and he said, “Thank you, goodbye, where you from, what’s your name,” and smiled, so I knew I got a good deal.

We asked at the Sari Spa if they had colon treatments.

“You mean colonic irrigation?”

“Yes.”

“The old colonic irrigation, eh?” I asked. “The butt pump? The sphincter strain?”

Tracey’s eyes twinkled, “I like that sort of thing.”

I got a mud bath, and if you ever sat in a mud bath you’d know not to fart, wait, and bend over, looking into where your lap should be, waiting, because it will, eventually, come, burbling, from the brown magma, splatting into your face.

Then Ketut worked my body. He put his knee between my legs and worked on me. I was just a little afraid he’d put his finger up my ass, but as a professional, he just massaged it. It’s hard to get used to some boy rubbing your ass cheeks – as self-conscious as we Westerners can be, and brushing near your cojones.

“But Ketut, we just met.”

He freed my mind, I let it go, and dropped, part consciously, part unconsciously, the baggage I’d been carrying. Tracey hadn’t been killed. She wouldn’t be. She was okay. I was alright. There was Nothing To Worry About. I let it all go. When he’d done all of me, I thanked him profusely, and went back and forth between the steam room where I sweated my poisons of preference out, and the whirlpool, which pleases me fetally. I thought of all the things I’d write – the stories, books, movies. I may not have had so much at the time, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t. I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. Then we had sushi at Ryoshi and saw the Balinese dancing, but we had to leave. Tracey’s three remedies and veggie oil kicked in, and she very nearly shit her pants.

Random Notes on Kuta

Kuta is the kind of place where you can walk up to a guy and say, “Excuse me, sir, but I regret to inform you of the necessity I have of serving these papers to you, informing you that you are guilty of a most atrocious hat.”

Kuta vendors say fuck you if you don’t buy fake perfume.

You can fuck the boys selling watches in Kuta where the quasi-educated, tattooed Ozzie Club meets. When they try to sell you a watch for 10,000, you offer 10,000 for “the whole box.” They sometimes take it. I don’t remember who told me this, or why.

Although I sit on the gate in the debate about fate, things come full circle in Bali. We’d gone back to Ubud, a place as humming with natural energy as Dead Horse Point in southern Utah, or Santorini in the Cyclades of Greece. I left my baggage at the Sari Spa and we shipped all the excess home from Seminyak. All the masks I’d haggled for in Kuta, a leather pocket book for my mom, a briefcase for me (maybe somehow I’d become a professional, my electric razor ((I decided to go straight razor)), statues, chopsticks, chimes and journals. The body must be streamlined.

I tried to reach my friend’s niece Luck in Bangkok, but had none. A girl didn’t speak English and didn’t convey one way or the other about Luck. If she were at the airport at midnight it would be blind chance.

Tracey shopped for six hours, and I gave out somewhere around the fifth. Dalia decided on the new, fancy restaurant and the three of us rode up there on her motorcycle, bouncing chaotically and recklessly through traffic. It felt kind of like playing the old video game Asteroids, which I never lived at for long.

Ian joined us. I’ve heard one of the saddest stories about him and one of the funniest from him. Dalia told us how for one reason or another he hadn’t been home in 15 years. Then he got a call from his sister. His father was dying. He flew to his hometown, Melbourne, on the next plane. He rushed to the hospital to find his father had died one hour before he arrived.

Over greasy fried wings, Dalia told us that 15 years ago when Seminyak was a jungle, Ian was its king. Ian, who resembled Rod Stewart, and a friend of his who looked like Mick Jagger, owned a restaurant on a remote beach.

“It was not a time of famine,” Ian said. “Girls came in off the beach topless, late- night parties on the beach. Drugs, excess, part of growing up,” he said. He must’ve been in his thirties then.

One day someone gave him a baby monkey. He called it Agung. They spoke sign language. Agung had his guts ripped out by a dog at six months. Ian was out of town, and a woman took him to a doctor who sewed him up. Ian made a coat for him so he couldn’t get into the stitches.

“Well, things were fine for a while,” he said. “Then at about two, Agung hit puberty. My friends told me I had to have my monkey neutered, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Besides jerking off, Agung took to eating cigarettes, even lit ones. He stole cameras too. I’d look over and Agung would be sitting there tranquilly, innocent. What he was actually doing was figuring out how to get to something like a breast. His worst new habit was biting nipples. I’d have to extricate my monkey, ‘Excuse me, could I have my monkey back please?’”

It just got to be too much. Then along comes this deaf guy who beat people up and intimidated others. He spoke in a series of unintelligible grunts and elaborate charades. He knew Ian wanted rid of Agung, so he explained that he’d take the monkey, which he did.

Ian left Bali for two years. When he came back, he saw the deaf man at the disco.

“’Alright, good on ya,’ he said, ‘How’s the monkey?’

He rubbed circles around his belly and grunted something like ‘Delicious.’”

Ian’s been out of the restaurant business for a while, but after 10 years he ran into the deaf man again, as it happened, telling the story. The man motioned to an old monkey leaning on a little cane, because old monkeys obviously need little canes.

“I’ll never know,” Ian said, “if he was lying or telling the truth. But I have a feeling.”

That will always sum up Bali to me.

October 9

That tepid Saturday, our last, we enjoyed the best breakfast in Indonesia at La Luce where we ate the first morning in Bali, stunned to be there at all. Pulling out in traffic on Dalia’s motorcycle, I missed the first wonder I’d felt on our arrival. The lost newness, the way I felt when I couldn’t take it all in on the ride from the airport to Dalia’s the first time I saw her house, even the stub-tailed Indonesian-looking cats, the statues aproned like Italian waiters, the cows, the air. Then through the rice paddies to La Luce, I’d seen countless in Apocalypse Now and Platoon, a string of war movies, but it still comes a shock when you see a farmer tilling the mud or turning ducks loose to eat the bugs that eat the rice.

The surf pounded like distant mortar, perfect waves rolling in three deep. Tourists took breakfast on teak lawn chairs under canvas umbrellas, another ideal day. I had a large pot of Italian-press coffee (4 cups), fried eggs, bacon, hash browns with onion, and I don’t know what heavenly spices – a meal in themselves. And toast with whipped butter and jam and service from four waiters who didn’t believe I was Honduran, and wouldn’t accept lempira.

I popped a wheelie so bad on the way home I thought we’d be mushed by oncoming traffic. A little girl on another scooter kept a wide-eye on us to see if we’d do it again.

That afternoon Tracey took us to have portraits made as Indonesian royalty. A bulimic woman showed us the three kinds of portraits they could take, one primitive, one royal, and one just plain cheesy. I’d set my sunglasses down, and for some reason she’d picked them up and handed them to me. These Jakarta women. I carried the money bag from the changing room to the studio in distrust, which later dissipated. Another woman did Tracey’s make-up and she looked ravishing, sexy and scary all at the same time. She looked like one of those models who sucks in her cheeks and shoots you the look that says, “You know you want to fuck me, but you never will.”

I blinked a lot as she applied eyeliner. It was my first time. They wrapped us in layers of royal regalia and pompous trinkets – faux grandeur of a lost empire. Then the ceiling fans cut off. The photographer and two other employees scampered around and found all the power cut off. A delivery guy came in and took off his helmet and told them the news. We all rushed to the door and billowing clouds of charcoal-black smoke filled the sky. The thatched roofs of several buildings went up like straw, and all hell gurgling to the surface seemed to be making its way to Dalia’s. Should we go over there? Warn her? Will someone tell her? She’ll find out. It’s kinda far. Can you take the pictures? The power people teased us a few times and I lost three pounds every two minutes sweating. Then we saw fire engines, finally. They called around. A hotel was on fire. Probably not a lot of fire insurance around there. Probably saves ‘em billions overall, but not those people, not this time. No one knew about the power. As we gave up and started to undress, the lights came back on. A woman came in while I had my pants off and saw my penis. The bulimic woman had too. She insisted I take off my shorts with her right there. I pulled my t-shirt down. These Jakarta women. They turned out to be anal perfectionists.

“Put your hand here, no, there. Tilt head up, no, down, turn, side, no, turn, smile, no smile, look away, no to camera, no.”

I couldn’t unsheathe the knife even just a little. I was afraid they’d turn out like Sears Portrait Studios where your neck’s all crooked.

“Why do y’all look like curious dogs?” someone will ask upon seeing our portraits.

“Well,” I might say, “these Jakarta women you see...”

“Pretend you’re having fun,” I told Tracey. “It’s sixty bucks.”

We decided to start a wall at home of all the lives we could’ve been born into. So far we’ve got Old West and Indonesian. Not much left is there?

“I didn’t like that very much,” Tracey said, walking down the street. They were total perfectionists, those Jakarta women.

Later it was sad to say goodbye to Dalia and Ian. Then off to sushi, Ryoshi, get it cheap while you can, and a lot of it. The couple across from us fought. A taxi driver tried to get a flat 10,000 rupiahs.

“No meter, no ride,” I said.

He drove off.

“What’d you do that for?” Tracey asked.

I didn’t answer, I didn’t know. The next taxi driver said, yeah sure, and popped the trunk. He was from Sumatra and moved “because of many kill. Not ready dead.”

Who could blame him?

The traffic was blocked by construction, and the cops used Jedi sword toys to try to control it. He honked and talked to himself and said he loved Bali. He came specifically to drive. The fare came to 7,000 rupiahs and I gave him the 10. It was worth every last red rupe to see the smile etched in that man’s face. Rice had gone up 30% in two years, and that’s almost all they ate. It was being bullied that infuriated me.

A man in a leather-banded straw hat, white sport coat, demoralizingly-fitted jeans, white sneakers, and black socks cut in front of us in the immigration line. About 450 people were trying to leave the country. I don’t know why it’s not called the demmigration line. Or unmigration? Or remigration? Migrate in and out? It’s all just walking and sitting anyway.

The hat bandit’s wife or mom snarl-nodded-thumb-pointed at the 448 hominids they cut off. Including nice Jason and Tracey. I jumped for the other line but it read, “Indonesian Courtesy, Asean,” and by then the tacky couple had cut Tracey off from civilization. You know when Indiana Jones is out in the desert and he’s thrown into a dark cavern? When he finally strikes a match, he’s surrounded by snakes? I was like Indiana Jones surrounded by tongue-flicking swine hounds and no matchstick. No part of the God in me acknowledged the God in them. There wasn’t enough to nod at.

“C’mon,” I said, shoving past them to regain our rightful place amongst my proud Asean people, but they stonewalled with unforgiving arthritic elbows. Tracey couldn’t push through, not even with me pulling her. That’s how they won the war. No. That’s how they started two World Wars – capital W’s. Maybe, giving them the benefit of the doubt, their concern was that they might not make it back to Pa in time for a barbecue if all six of them, tanned and frizzed and indignant, didn’t push past Tracey. If so, they’re fears were unfounded. I’m from the South.

“You’ll get to your barbecue,” I snapped, “Back off.”

They Deutsched us but to their incalculable providence we deescalate the Hun threat by refusing to nitpick Heidegger’s. No wonder people loathe tourists. We slipped past them when summoned before our Asean people. I am part Mongol – my eyes and bloodthirsty conquering and stuff. We breezed right through.

Garuda flight 972, with a stop in Bangkok, went on to Frankfurt. I guess Germany’s wonderful if you’re stationed there, in the Army, and don’t know better because you have half a brain. That’s not your fault. I’ve heard plenty of stupid people say they like it.

“I don’t like these people,” Tracey said, “They’re not nice.”

An older couple with a misplaced yacht broke free out of the glass and perfume prison they call a duty free store. Weighted down with protuberant lamé plastic bags as he was, the old man, stallion at heart, outpaced his filly by three lengths.

“He’s not into her,” Tracey said.

“Losers,” I said. “You think we’ll be rich?”

“I hope so.”

“I always assumed I wouldn’t be. Or would be. Or in the middle.”

“How are we going to pay for all this travel?”

“Full moon blood sacrifice.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine, in the alley, by the hand of Little Head with a bottle of Moët ChanDog 20/20.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I didn’t.”

On the flight to Bangkok, I sat next to an American couple. Tracey got Deutsch. I had two German girlfriends the previous summer. Well, friends who were girls. I had sex with them. They were great. At first. Later, for example, the ocean of language between us would an ocean of languish. They liked to sit in the fire. Didn’t get my jokes. So I dumped Nicole to be with Tracey, bought her a one-way ticket home on Christmas Eve. Her father not to fly to Guatemala halfway around the world to meet a tour leader she only knew for two weeks (and then called persistently whenever I was in a hotel, entertaining or indisposed). Dad was right. I fell in love with Tracey days before I met up with her in Guatemala City and made her cry at a joyous happy time festival in the Western Highlands. Merry Christmas Nicole. It’s not because you were German and my family’s Jewish and your family would have incinerated my family if that hadn’t had the sense to keep on moving. I kept the pretense as long as I could till faking it was obvious. I should never have agreed to meet her. An ounce of prevention… Plus, as a wise man who wore fur skirts and sang for a band called Furnace Face once said, you can’t help whom you love. Not even with proper grammar. Therefore I hereby rescind all claims and associated rights and privileges associated with my soapbox, like making fun of Mr. and Mrs. Snooty von Yachtsdale. Won’t do that anymore, because that’s the last time I’ll carry so much soap I need a box to hold it all. It’s not traveling light, and it’s not good clean living. Ask Nicole. She hates my guts. Happy New Year!

Tracey and I both narrowly avoided having to sit next to SIJT, or Stereotypical International Jet Trash, and BB, his woman Big Booty. He likes that caboose. It was getting all little engine that could in their two feet of seat. Tracey’s Germans turned out to be Uruguayans. I didn’t exchange two words with the Americans. I know their country.

Half an hour before we landed I tried to learn some Thai from the guidebook. Actually, I looked at the pictures. Beaches, blah blah blah, to the south. Elephants, blah blah blah, to the north. But what got me most excited was the food. Our favorite bar none is Thai. Every payday till we go broke we eat Thai – lemon grass Tom Yum Kai (what is lemon grass?), coconut soother Tom Kha Kai, Mee Krob – the resurrection of pasta in the exotic and delicate form of glass noodles, the Pad Thai that took my virginity with a twist of lime (I’ll never forget you), and The Big Daddy of Them All, whole fried catfish hanging over both ends of the plate and that accusatory, bug-eyed stare from beyond. When it’s in season, we trek a horrid stretch of infinite vistas, the winding star thresher Pacific Coast Highway wedged between sister cities Tijuana and Vancouver for the Single Best Unqualified Taste in the Universe, The Sensorial Singularity, and Crown Queen of Victorian Capitalization which exists beyond words yet paradoxically is experienced best within the mouth; mango with sweet sticky rice. And yes, tongues have orgasms.

On the opposite end of the appetizing spectrum, the guidebook unquestionably triangulates ground zero of sucking-wind Siam squarely on Khao San Road, the seedy sphincter infamous for the equally unquestionably devout worship of Dionysus by American G.I.’s. For lodging, I picked a random number, 29, the New Nith Charoen Hotel, which was supposed to have similar rooms and rates but slightly better service than the Khaosan Palace Hotel, and slightlys add up.

Since I was so successful I decided to try to tiptoe into Thai fluency. Hello – Sawát die – that would break the ice. Thank you – Khàwp kuhn – we’re best friends. Khráp – Yes – winning more friends. Thâorai – How much – I mean business. Literally. Hâwng sûam – toilet – I’ve got to do my business. As wisdom would move in over the course of the next few weeks, I’d come to the illumination that hâwng sûam was the only word I would need, but I would need it desperately and frequently.

Kenji from Japan stopped us before we left the airport. He was headed to Khao San Road. He must’ve read the same guide. We split a taxi. He was from Tokyo, going to Myanmar. He spoke to the driver in English – one Asian to another in English that only one spoke not well. They weren’t able to exchange much information.

The airport looked like a cross between San Salvador and Detroit. We took a highway that unspooled from history’s biggest spool on and on – un and un – tall buildings all around us – it could’ve been South Bend, Indiana on the South Side of Chicago where Dad and I once pulled off for gas. And pulled right back on. On E. Ah, the old gas game… so fun, not so fun for passengers. Somebody’s gotta push.

When we left the highway, it looked like Italy. A guy pulled up in a jazzy three-wheeler and stared. This was a new set of wheels that was going to change my life, but I didn’t know it yet.

Tracey and Kenji talked but neither knew what the other was saying. We passed a market’s midnight madness.

Finally, our street, hopping like a psychedelic toad, wide-awake staring at the ceiling grinding teeth gripping sheets white fingernails deafening bass dance bullshit it thumped the hell out of the floorboards and rattled the words in my head. When they weren’t chatting up the police, sweet-looking local girls poured syrup on the travel trash spilling out of half-hearted bars full of lots of lonely-eyed slumpers at those tables looking out onto the street by the waning neon...

We got a cellblock with A/C and the constant gurgle of running water. Tracey put her toothbrush on the ledge over the sink and it came away with a pubic hair. It sounded like there was rioting or chanting in the street. When we went back out I saw grill push-carts, action-movie zombies, plenty of drunk Aussies, and when we walked into the inconvenience store to buy water, I don’t know if I was tired or what, but I felt like I was on acid. Glad I wasn’t. Strange breezes blow in Bangkok.

Upon returning to cellblock F3, I asked Tracey if wanted to have lurid sexy in a sleazy motel in Bangkok.

She asked if I wanted to see a sex show. If I did it was out of curiosity, not sexuality.

“Was I curious?” she asked.

“Yeah, a little. You?”

“Not really.”

The guidebook warned, she read aloud, of razor artists, three-wheel taxis, and returning home with huge credit card bills after being abducted by proprietors of guesthouses in Chang-Mai. We also weren’t supposed to put our baggage on a roof or under a seat, or take chocolates or drinks from strangers. They might be drugged. Also, don’t eat fresh water fish, or swim in fresh water, because liver flukes bore through your skin. There was a lot to look forward to.

Sunday (I lost track of the date)

Crooked? This place makes NYC look like a prep school girl in a pleated skirt. Here on the Khao San Road, you can get any sort of fake ID card made on the street while you wait. Walking to a travel agency, a young Japanese guy stopped me – speaking English.

“Where you staying?”

His English was too good. Maybe he was Hawaiian.

“Khao San.” It was close enough, he should’ve known about it.

“Cheap places?”

“Oh, yeah. One-eighty, 200 baht.”

But he didn’t have any luggage. Very clean cut, khaki shorts, white t-shirt.

“Are you traveling alone?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He winked and said bye. I’m so naïve I didn’t realize what he’d been getting at until afterward.

I found the agency the Americans had recommended at breakfast. The guy was real helpful. They charged 20 baht over cost. He said I’d have to call and come by again. It was a nice walk but not a short one. Why didn’t I go by Song Seem in the morning to do some shopping? He said all the other tourists buy from there.

I walked back past the little stalls. Every plastic trinket ever conceived, every piece of crap, was on display, including junk and baubles of all forms, colors, shapes, and sizes. Asians, I concluded, love the plastic, synthetic crap you try to encourage your gets not to get addicted to, the things you can throw away with confidence as soon as you got home.

I cut through some alleys and thought of the scene in “An Officer and a Gentleman” when he’s been taken to Southeast Asia by the sailor who “raises” him, and he turns a corner playing with some kids, only to find they’ve trapped him and kick the holy-living shit out of him.

The old ladies frying lard balls just looked up with passive curiosity at my passing. Another white guy come and gone. There are more lard balls to fry, chickens to grill, intestines to get to, doughnuts to sprinkle caramel on. I passed the New World Shopping Center.

Tracey’s sugar levels rollercoaster when she’s hungry so when she starts acting crazy and desperate we have to eat soon. Her stomach’s sensitive so it must be “good food,” which means air-conditioned restaurants. I prefer diarrhea from push-carts but I had a hard time of talking her into that. In the Desperate Planet Guide, they said on the eighth floor of the NWDS we’d find a selection of nice restaurants, after we made love, paid for another night (which we agreed upon on the basis of inertia), and got it together.

They don’t speak much English here, as if in an American city they’d learn Portuguese for tourists. It was no more apparent than in the hotel.

“You pay now.”

“Blanket?”

“Blanket? No, you pay now.”

“Can I see another room? F7? F8?”

“No.”

She showed us the dungeon and the torture chamber, so I decided to stay in Cell Block F3. Even prison gets comfortable after a while. When I returned to the front desk she sighed a sigh as if we put her through absolute hell, just to stay in the same room.

“Now you want blanket?”

She gave us two sheets. Two sheets don’t make a blanket, but I took them. Maybe I’ll use them since the man who was their supplier of toilet paper couldn’t get any more. I smiled, and told her they were wonderful. The girl almost cracked a smile and Tin Tin, the man who looked like the little French cartoon character went back to his fashion magazine.

I bought a phrasebook and decided were I to get anywhere there I’d have to work at it. Apparently, v’s don’t exist even though they do, and despite what we think, l’s and r’s are interchangeable. And if I can’t transliterate something, it never works. Only the mad hatter could take your Thai hat size. And ch, j, s, and d and t are at the end of words. G is k, and b is p. Also, if you say mai five times with slight variations, it means, “New wood doesn’t burn does it?” I figured the language would take some practice.

I read Nelson Algren in spite of the hellos of the hello-girls at the Hello Restaurant. I wrote a couple of poems that made no sense and got a good buzz on by the time Tracey came around. I showed her the newspaper. Clinton said he didn’t oppose opposition to the argument against land mines. She said I needed an editor. I berated her for condemning a president we thought had to have a conscience, even if he had nothing to lose in his second term.

“Do you still want to see a sex show?” she asked.

I confided I didn’t know where one was.

“There’s four guys,” I said, “I’ll find out.”

I approached them eating at the place we ate breakfast and asked if I could trouble them.

“No,” the one in the Hawaiian shirt said.

“Where are the sex shows?” I asked.

“I like the direct approach,” another one said.

Tracey came up and slapped me on the back. A woman being interested interests men beyond belief.

“Up Patpong,” one stammered, shy, but in the know. “S-s-standard s-sex show, s-striptease?”

“What are you looking for?” Hawaiian shirt asked.

“Kinky,” Tracey said.

“Ping pong balls?”

“Yes!”

“Darts landing on your feet?”

“Yes.”

“Group sex?”

“Yes.”

“Whoa. We don’t know about that.”

“I want to get my watch fixed too,” I said.

A blistered Asian moon hung in the guilty sky. It was guilty for overseeing all that – and innocent for all else it’d wasted its time on.

“This is a mutual decision, right?” Tracey asked.

“Yes.”

“Can we leave if I feel sick?”

“No. Yes, of course we can.”

“Is that what you think a friend would do?”

“That. And score opium. Drink beer. Go see a sex show. Drink beer. Come back here. Drink beer. Smoke more opium. Talk about what a weird day it was. Try to write in Sanskrit and pass out.”

She called her dad. He liked the idea of a cheap suit. She put the old school Texan in touch with Viki the Hindu who made my first bespoke suit and Tracey's dress.

October 10

I was locked out and hung over. I looked up and down the road. I went to a bathroom at a restaurant. There was no toilet paper. I sprayed some hose up my ass and wiped it with my finger. Water ran down my legs. I hoped no one would see the wet spots on my ass as I left the restaurant. I figured if Tracey wasn’t back, I’d lay down in the hall and die. I wasn’t angry, all I wanted was to wipe my ass.

There’s not a mountain to move, there’s a different place to stand and see it. A thief stays in the house of my heart, cooks in the kitchen of my soul, and for thinking things, you gotta get your mind around it, and like any organism digest it and pass it on. I can understand almost anything, but some things I digest better than others. Two people are also an organism. There are echoes between them. It takes longer to dissolve and dissipate issues, but it is stronger when equilibrium is reached – the interdependence is interlocked.

I feel as though I was born with a sword. Injustice infuriates me. Sex here in Bangkok is amoral. It’s for sale everywhere, and I’m not a prude. When someone is hurt, used, abused, I get my back up. That is the past. Tracey needs me now. I need to lay the sword down.

Sex is the symptom, not the disease. The crux is the thought. That is the baggage. I am the thief that left the baggage but stole a piece and put it in my pocket.

I was already nearly drunk (as in, veer off the road and kick up some dust), when Tracey said, “Ok cowboy, let’s do this thing.”

“Okay.”

We belted back a few bourbons and whiskeys and hailed a cab.

“Patpong.”

“No,” he said, and drove off.

“That’s not a good sign,” Tracey said.

We got one of those garish three-wheelers called a tuk-tuk. It had authentic faux leather seats.

“Patpong.”

“Oh,” he said, with an impish, brooding smile.

“What’s your tuk-tuk’s name?”

“My name?”

“No, your tuk-tuk’s name?”

“No name.” No smile. Okay.

“What’s your name?”

I didn’t hear and couldn’t have remembered if I had. The tuk-tuk whined like a little motorcycle, and we hurtled through the stinky streets – the ride seemed to go on and on.

“Who’s that on the billboard over there?”

No reply.

“Probably the king’s wife. Or mom.”

No answer. Toot-toot – hum – errrr – hum, bouncing like a Trawangan pony cart. He could’ve been taking us into an alley to extricate our organs. Lonely Planet said never trust these guys. So we took one. He pulled into an alley, and up to a business building.

A Thai man came up. Others too. I did a double-take and gave the old Italian double-punch.

“Yeah,” he said.

“What is there?”

“Ping pong, razor, banana.”

“How much is it?”

“Five hundred baht, each.”

“We don’t have enough money.”

“Change money.”

The driver took us to a hotel, finally, after we got it across we had no ATM card.

Since I figured we were going to the heart of darkness, I only brought the bare minimum – some cash, no traveler’s checks, and no more. You never needed a passport in Indonesia. They trust more. Bangkok – no passport, no cash. Tracey walked out angry.

He took us to another hotel. Then through alleys to another. And another. I went in and spoke smoothly and promised to come back the next day with my passport. They had none of it. This took about an hour and a half.

Khao San Road – 200 baht and back where we started. It was midnight and I could’ve slept easily. But Tracey was into it, and I figured it was probably a rare opportunity.

So we took a taxi back to Patpong. Unfriendliest cabbie in the world. He couldn’t find the unassuming business front. I spotted the alley, he U-turned, and when we paid the old man, the look on his face said, “Sure, you’re digging your own grave.”

“Over,” the man at the door said. We’d been so excited.

A tuk-tuk driver we flagged down told us not to go on into Patpong proper. It was mafia, they would abduct us, not return us till we gave them all our money.

“I don’t care,” he said, “Your neck.”

As soon as he closed the door I told the shy old taxi driver, Patpong.

He dropped us off and the neon spilled over sex-crazed tourists, well-dressed moms and pops. TV’s blared and “Supergirls” promised the world. Apparently Thai women are superhuman and could do anything with their vaginas.

Young men tried to hustle you in, corralling with carnivorous delights. “We want to see people doing it,” I said, “you know,” giving the international sign of penetration, the finger in the hole.

“No. Police stop that.”

“A sex mall with nobody doing it?”

I watched as a policeman walked into a club we went into. He negotiated something. A few women stood around a stage, bored.

We left.

At another place they promised us we’d see click-click, you now, doing it. Inside, a few bored women shuffled back and forth on a stage. For a minute there I almost thought they were dancing, but I was mistaken. They were trying to decide which foot hurt more.

Then one laid down, grabbed a hollow tube from the bar, stuck in her ying-ying, and the other girl held up a balloon. She inhaled deeply, took aim, and shot that dart right into the balloon which made the other girl clap, but nobody else.

Someone brought them a tray of eggs, which must’ve been hard-boiled because they hadn’t broke when they shot out of her cooter and plopped in a beer glass. I think she could’ve split the arrow.

And last but not least, ping pong balls. Bounce, bounce, bounce.

She smiled. We left.

At another place where they promised we could see click-click-double-punch, a bored woman was lowered over the bar in a martini glass. She took a bath and washed herself until they got the winch working and brought her back up.

“Is this what guys do?” Tracey asked.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“There isn’t much to it.”

A bored girl shifted from one foot to the other to “Material Girl.” “No, there isn’t.”

They herded a dozen girls onto the stage in a matching dresses, which they took off anyway. Tracey commented on their cute shoes. I avoided eye contact with them, it depressed me. They didn’t bother pretending to dance. They were already dead.

We went to McDonald’s. I got all excited over chicken McNuggets. I loved those l’il varmints.

Later, in bed, drunk, about two in the morning, I told Tracey sometimes I feel like a thief. Then I asked her to attack me. I needed the attention. In spite of the McNuggets, my soul had still been drained by the vampires of Patpong.

The next day we got our act together, slowly, and caught the 6:30 train south. We’d eaten at the place where the waiters pick their noses and wipe it on the table cloth, but it wasn’t that good.

At the supermarket, I made my greatest discovery yet ever. Curry in a bag, 20 baht.

The train rocked gently and the spring rolls and curry made for the greatest picnic anyone has ever had. We pulled out the beds and the slumber party rolled on. Dinner was so good I didn’t even brush my teeth.

In our own compartment, air-conditioned, worth the extra $10, we curled up and read and wrote. I figured we’d pull into Krabi about 5:30 am, and then board a boat to paradise.

I listened to Tom Waits like I always did. It must be sultry where Tom lives ‘cause he can croon.

October 14

The train that was due to Sarat Thani at 5:30 got there at 6:30. I got up at 5 to be safe.

We both felt ill instantly – but on opposite ends of the spectrum.

The plan had been to go to Krabi. A bus to a station to another bus. A German couple was going to Ko Samui as was the American English teacher I’d pegged for a sex tourist but turned out to be very nice. As the station, owned by Songserm Travel 6, which I now figured owned everything travel-related, they said we could leave for Krabi at 10:30 or Ko Samui at 9:30. Bus vs. ferry. I pegged the ferry for better facilities.

By 11:30, we still weren’t on a ferry. Tracey nearly died on the two hour bus ride to get to the one-and-a-half hour ferry. She laid on the floor and doubled over in pain. I fanned her to try to keep her alive. There was construction the whole way.

They took us to another truck stop restaurant where we waited some more.

I read Nelson Algren on the fix of the 1919 World Series for distraction from my stomach and when I got too sick looked out at the jungle and all that red mud just like in Georgia. Lush would be an understatement for the verdant tangle of the Thai countryside. Jungle isn’t harsh enough. Sticky isn’t wet enough. Watery land, moisture-trapped, making emeralds pale in comparison.

October 15

Tracey finally lost the battle of fighting foulness from below, on a squat-hole in the bowels of a lurching ferry. In the darkness of a thunderstorm, something with a head and eyes crawled out of her gopher hole, she told me, even though I didn’t want her to.

She passed out on the floor for the rest of the journey. The ferry pulled into Na Thon or Ko Samui, a little port town. We’d passed some islands – rising heights out of the Sea of Thailand, limestone cliffs covered in tropical carpet. We followed a Thai named Toy off the ferry choked with carbon monoxide from the cars off-loading, and along the pier. Sea monsters floating in the clear water, ropes hair-green from the years.

Toy, a Sang Representative, with a birthmark on his neck, and a flat face that ran straight down to his throat, sold us transport tickets.

“Which is better?” I had asked him, “Chaweng or Lami?” which Inaccurate Planet claimed to have the best sparkling water and beautiful sands.

“Chaweng,” Toy said.

It was odd that he happened to be going to Chaweng. We wondered on the walk down the pier whether the donkey would have skates. Toy figured nearly every angle. For 60 baht he’d take us to Chaweng, in air-conditioned comfort, and show us a place that the pictures made look nice.

I sat next to the other old American man. He was a theater professor in Chicago. “Good little program,” he said. In the summers he performed in musicals, “to keep the blood flowing.”

“Musicalsshmusicals,” Tracey said. She’d been in several. She didn’t care to join the conversation.

He’d been at UC San Diego for three years. The first year there was no smog. There were lots by year three.

“How’s L.A. smog?” he asked.

“We live in Venice, so we export ours inland.”

“I loved Rent.”

“Timely,” he said. “But the old folks don’t go for it, or understand it, and they’re the ones who can afford it.”

I got us on the topic of Tom Stoppard. “I saw the second run of Arcadia in London and took Tracey to see it in L.A., which wasn’t nearly as good as the London run.”

“If you can’t do an English accent,” the professor said, “Don’t try.”

“It’s the old Kevin Costner Robin Hood problem, how did an American take over Sherwood Forest before America existed?”

“Quite right,” he said, “But what a play!”

He saw Arcadia three times.

“Math, philosophy, landscape, the mystery of what happened to these people’s lives, and, essentially it’s a love story. A genius. Travesties. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Jumpers.”

We saw eye-to-eye.

“I feel like I’ve been in Chicago reading Nelson Algren.”

“He’s having a comeback isn’t he? Moved East and died there. Chicago never accepted him – he – and Hemingway – were its greatest writers. Figures. Who likes to be told they have problems?”

“Look what they did to Socrates.”

“Algren was an alcoholic,” he told me.

“If that’s the good news, I don’t want to hear the bad.”

“He died the day before his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Heartbreaking enough to be in one of his stories.”

“Have you been up north?”

“No.”

“Are you going?”

“No. We decided to have a tropical beach paradise theme vacation.

“This isn’t what I had in mind when I thought of a tropical paradise,” he said as we pulled into Hat Chewang, on the other side of the island. It looked like every other Third World shithole. Trash, dusty streets, cinderblock buildings, dogs with mange.

“It’s taken us 22 hours to get here,” I said.

Toy and his boy took us to the place in the picture, which was nice, but there was only one room on the water, and it was taken. The others didn’t warrant a 22-hour journey in sickness but not in health.

It was on the beach, that one room, and the AC room got occupied by two girls who were on the bus, but jumped in front of us. Then there were no more rooms, not even shitty ones. But the beach stretched on forever and was littered with places to stay.

We thought of walking but the heat might’ve committed murder, so we let our boy Toy show us another commission-filled option on ol’ Shewang Beach.

It wasn’t a dump because people hadn’t started leaving stuff there yet so we took to foot, opting out on Toy’s further options, bidding farewell to our American friends who claimed they were heading to the Regent, fuck the 3,000 baht.

Tired and getting short, we looked at another place that couldn’t passed a city council landfill proposal, another place that were it in the States they wouldn’t razed it under Reagan and built high-rise condos, and a place so under-renovation we would’ve stayed in the one room they had and been their only occupants this century.

We still spoke no Thai at this point, which didn’t help.

We tried a nice place, 800 baht, no bargain, and the Outdated Planet tells you to bargain for everything. They say everything is one-fifth cheaper than it is, making me feel stupid for paying full-price for anything, even if that’s all they’ll take and it’s what I want. It creates a gap between expectation and satisfaction that adds up to unhappiness; the cult of insatiable consumerism. Finally, we settled on an unsettling price and the proprietor reached for a key but there were none left. Where was the forethought that would have told him he was out of rooms before we bothered with negotiations in sign language?

Picking up her backpack, I thought Tracey might terminate our engagement, by dropping dead. I offered to carry her bag but pride fueled her “no.” Then we came upon Blue Lagoon, a resort with masseuses and servants to put the lawn chair and pillow where you want in the shade and bring you a towel while waiting for their elephant “Bang” to arrive. When I saw the Jacuzzi and the pool with the tile mermaid on the bottom, the raked sand, and a man told us he’d carry our packs to the front desk, I said, “Phuket” to the two-thousand baht, or $57, which was just going to go into the Visa hole which I’d faithfully ignored for 2 years to the tune of $20,000 anyway, so what?

Bang the baby elephant, Phuket, Thailand

The room had construction going on outside. Why is the entire Third World under construction anyway? The next room, 402, by the road, was the greatest. As we learned later swimming in the pool, a jackhammer rattled on the other side of the property.

We spent another $30 on dinner, Mixto Frito – superb – and a few drinks on the house since it was Tuesday, 6-7 p.m. Okay.

We slept 12 hours – the best sleep of my life. Breakfast was included, a massive fried buffet free-for-all. We got there for 20 minutes of it and they started taking it away which didn’t matter to me I had to shit so bad.

Tracey came in screaming she had to shit too. She’d shit her underwear on the ferry so I let her have the bathroom and went to the office bathroom.

Then I asked the hotel travel agent about the full-moon party travelers had told us about. It was to be at Ko Pha Ngan the 16th, the next day. She smiled and said she’d call. She talked on the phone for 20 minutes then told me it was tomorrow at Ko Pha Ngan.

“Cop khun crap,” I said, “You’ve been very helpful.”

When the muddy rivers finally stopped flowing long enough, I went and got tickets to the next island from a man named Rat. He liked me because I hit him up for Thai lessons because I just couldn’t get an audible sound out of the Deaf Planet phrasebook. He said he might give me some money back the next day. We also looked at other hotels and decided on Muang Kulay pan.

October 16

I didn’t want to get out of bed that morning. Tracey was sick, I was sick, the room was dark and cold, it was bright, hot, and soaking humid outside. Breakfast was nice, the pancakes were light golden brown enough for Tracey, no easy task, and I didn’t have to beg for coffee refills, a real treat.

We’d met Bonnie and Claude of Santa Barbara the day before. First in the lobby of the Muang hotel, where she was hopping around in a cast, her toes showing scrapes and bruises. I asked her how she liked the hotel, and she said at $30 it was a great deal. I liked idea of another day of pampered rest, and Tracey needed it. I saw Bonnie again later sitting by the pool. Tracey went off to develop film and Ian was off walking. They’d got engaged the night before, right there on the beach. She said he felt bad about the motorbike wreck. He said they’d been lucky, it could’ve been a lot worse. He seemed so relieved. There was sand from the water that washed over the roads from the rain, and worse, it was no longer muddy. If you’re not from here, you’re not used to driving in it.

There were on a cover-seeking mission for a women’s journal on Thai paper and of Thai design. Her mother had invented the Day Runner, and she discussed Abbott Kinney, the road we lived off of where she used to have a business, as casually as Bali, Mexico, and Guatemala.

“We looked at other places,” she told me, “they were alright, very well-tended landscape, very feminine, but this place is very masculine.”

I thought maybe there were abstract architectural terms I wasn’t acquainted with. “Did you see the toilet paper holders?” she asked.

“When you’re perched on the porcelain it’s hard to miss a 10-inch pecker protruding in your face.”

“Did you see those?” She gestured to two 10-foot tall marble Johnsons standing at attention on either side of the main stairway.

“I hadn’t,” I said, “but I see what you mean. They’ve got a serious cockfestation on their hands.”

The swords, the banners, even the palm trees looked suggestive to me.

“The simplicity, the straight lines, all that,” Tracey said, “masculine. No frills.”

“Little heavy handed for my taste,” I said. “It’s a beautiful hotel, but they cocked it up. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

“Now you see how it feels.”

That flippant laugh, I was glad to hear its sharp ridicule crack the air in half again. She’d been so low down.

She napped on the delirious raft, I floated in the posh pool, and we picked up our film. I thought I misheard the man. I was flabbergasted. Back at the hotel, Bonnie was flabbergasted. Claude nearly fell off his sala.

“That’s what a car wreck cost us,” he said.

“I thought he said a roll of doubles was 40 baht,” Tracey said.

“How much were they?” Claude prodded with a lifted chin.

“Each picture was…”

I turned to her expectantly donning the father figure. Unwise husbandry, but old habits die hard. Especially habits you want.

“Forty baht. Each.”

“Panoramas,” I couldn’t not say, “even more. It came to over 5,000 baht, what, about $150?”

“Yeah,” Bonnie said.

“Yeah,” Claude echoed. “They can take the rest of the month off with what they made off you.”

I shook my head. “We had to wait half an hour for them to rip us off. I felt like saying, ‘Why don’t I just pay you five times too much and we’ll call it even?’”

“It was the fuck-up of the century,” Tracey said. What life she’d mustered to get the pics back had leaked out.

“Fuck it,” I said. “It’s only money.”

“That’s right,” Bonnie said, raising a glass. “It’s only money!”

It was more than money. The photos loaded me down an extra 15 pounds, so the following morning a taxi driver (con artist) drove us in squares trying to find the post office. When he dumped us on the side of the road on the south side of the edge of town in the pouring rain I was finally convinced the post office didn’t actually exist, exactly like the front desk clerk told me. Overcharged in the back of beyond, sodden in a malarial, mosquito-infested cesspool, swelling in a diarrhea-inducing nausea sauna with righteous indignation, a vengeful thirst, and ugly hate I couldn’t contain anymore, I yelled fuck, slammed my hat down on the ground, and Tracey flinched. I picked up the bill and the dunce cap part of my baseball hat and looked for forgiveness. I saw a pallid beauty on the brink of system failure.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, the bolt’s singe sinking in.

“It’s ok,” she said, hand over heart.

At the hospital/morgue dispensed “Traley” antibiotics that would soon give her a wicked yeast infection. We’d blown $500 dollars in a few days so Accounting nixed our little glacivacation at The Anaconda Inn. I indulged in one last moonlit swim and a dog peed on my towel.

I didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning and leave our cold dark cave. I didn’t even know what day it was. I did know what night it was -- Full Moon Party.

A man named Rat took us to the ferry. The Big Buddha statue sat with his Big Back to us off in the distance. A gay gang of Thai boyz II men boarded. The traveler tried not to stare but did anyway. Tight shorts, a ladybug daypack, and a choral rendition of “The Power of Love” left their unmovable mark on his memory.

A little after noon we got to the beach where the full moon party was supposed to be and at the first hotel we stopped at, the Het Rin. A tongue-tied Thai fellow told us “no rooms, go see for self.” Another fellow said there was another hotel a 10-minute walk away.

“Let’s just take a taxi,” Tracey said.

Two Europeans who were also looking for rooms said they’d looked for 2 1⁄2 hours – nothing. We climbed in the back of a pickup to go to Ben Kai with them and a random Japanese guy. We trudged through troughs full of rainwater. He picked up another woman. The driver took us on a big look through town. The woman said he had to do a big loop because all the streets were one way. Tracey was bent over the whole time, holding her tummy. I thought she’d lose it or I’d lose her.

The lady was a jeweler in Hat Rin for seven years. She no longer went to full moon parties, but recommended First Villa. It sounded romantic and primary. Up and down hills on a road narrower than my driveway, washed out in places, to discover First Villa, full. Dan Kai was a wash. Too rough. We got to Thongsala – a tropical port with shops along a dirty beach and pier, and off a short way, a row of high-rise hotels with air conditioning. Yes. No. The Japanese fellow got off and in the last room of the first hotel. We kept going.

The jeweler had said Siripun was nice, but it was not, so we decided not to stay in a hot, ugly room with a concrete floor, no AC, and a filthy beach. Past that place the road kicked up dust. Tracey looked like she had on makeup and said I looked like I had gray hair.

“This is taking years off my life,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

“I need a beer.”

“I need Ipecac.”

The guy in sneakers he’d drawn on his feet with magic marker said he needed two. Past small towns, fishing villages, palm groves, old and young – remote coastal Thailand. The kind of place you expect them to drop Agent Orange any minute. Then it started to piss down rain. Tracey pulled down the plastic flap and it slapped her in the back.

I told them it was a typical day for us in Thailand. They’d all been like this. We loved Indonesia and they were nice. There was always bullshit in Thailand. They tell you one thing, you get another. We were exhausted and sick and tired. We couldn’t afford 30 or 50 bucks a night. Just some comfort...

Eating dirt wasn’t enough, we needed a torrential downpour. Tracey was laughing and crying. We were getting farther and farther from the full-moon party.

They pulled into Sea Flower.

Coconuts painted orange cut into flowers for lampshades hung on the thatch roof of the bar. A Canadian-Thai couple ran the place. A good thing. It was a traveler’s den. The huts spread their legs from there and between a grotto of landscape architecture. The beach asleep in the cloudy later afternoon. The palms massive – drooping wearily. A black light and dartboard served as end pieces for the tables and benches cut lengthwise from logs shellacked and shiny. Hipsters played backgammon, tattooed and half-dressed, sucking fruit shakes through straws. The place had groovy class. A statue of the God of Funk behind the bar deemed it so.

The toilets are pits, Tracey loved the place. Our little bungalow looked like a sneeze might blow it down but the mosquito net, hammock on the porch, and open-air bathroom lent much charm. Of course, the mattress was dirty, the top of the mosquito net had unidentifiable shit all over it, nothing so much as slowed down mosquitoes, there was a likelihood of shitting on your pants or feet the way the toilet was constructed, and you could cut the heat with a knife, with no hope of air-conditioning, but we loved it. So we settled in for an hour-long backgammon match in which we ruthlessly bumped each other until I won by one roll. Gaming is such a safe way to take out your aggression on your life partner.

Jasmine spoke English but didn’t need to tell us she hated the place. They came from Switzerland, Luzerne, and were nice people. We’d covered many miles together in the back of the pickup truck, but the relationship was such that we didn’t say goodbye the next day somehow.

Sweeney, on the other hand, was a good fella. A kind, gentle travel bum who sailed the seven seas, a bald head and goatee and tattoos he designed himself. Under the shade of the palm grove with the beach a short distance away, we got to talking to him as he leaned on a triangular pillow on one of the long benches like he was king of the world.

“Where you from?” I asked.

“Sheffield, then London, all around, like a gypsy. Lost my accent somewhere, didn’t get another one.”

You couldn’t place it. England, Australia, New Zealand.

“I been in Asia for three years. Diving. I want to start studying yoga too, meditation. I think the East knows what it is to be human. To live. Western culture’s not it, man.”

“Lot of categories in the West,” I said.

“Diseases, accidents, you get in the West, you don’t get in the East. Disease comes from the mind. Accidents. You’re stressed, you have to go to work, you crash the car.”

“It’s not for everyone.”

“It’s not for me, that’s for sure. I want to learn Eastern philosophy. I realize how much more and more I have things up here,” pointing to his head, “I need to clear out. Things when I was younger I put away, and didn’t know where they went. Now I know they’re there, things I can’t remember, I don’t remember anything from before I was about eight. I have one memory, just a flash, playing with a plastic telly, a glimpse. I hated England, did my share of partying, you now, really hard, lots of things.”

“I’ve done acid and mushrooms for 14 years,” I said, “My half-life.”

“You get to higher chakra levels that way,” Tracey said, pointing to the cover of his meditation book. “Most of the time we’re only at the first two levels, root and tube.”

“How do you know about that?” Sweeney asked.

“Reading. There are a lot of authors writing on that, body memories, healing.”

“There are all kinds of retreats and institutes on the West Coast for that,” I said. He seemed surprised to find something redeeming in the West.

Later I told Tracey, “Just ‘cause you want some bacon doesn’t mean you gotta buy the whole hog.”

We lay in bed debating the full moon party. The taxi was to leave at nine. Roger put our name on the list. He was from London, his fifth visit to Thailand and his fourth full moon party.

“Top place,” he said. He had the corner bungalow on the beach done up like home. He was planning to whoop it up with diet pills and dance, dance, dance.

Berged from Germany was going. Jenn from Chicago with designs carved into her shaved head was going, and other Brits. Patrick and Jasmin, but not Sweeney. His latest tattoo was bubbling, not healing at all. Maybe it was a disease of the mind.

We especially debated because Tracey had been to the hospital where even the nurses were afraid for her. They even walked her back to the hotel. The doctor told her she was exhausted and dehydrated and needed rest, to do nothing. So we had come to Kho Pha Ngan by taxi, ferry, and pickup in high heat and pouring rain.

“It’s ridiculous,” I said, “I couldn’t expect you to go.”

“You’ve wanted to go to a full moon party for years.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“You’re not into it are you?”

“No. It’s like a Dead show without the music. If we were A) healthy, B) rested, and C) wanted to trip, that would be one thing. Eh, maybe I’ll go for a few hours.”

“I don’t want you to go alone.”

“I’ve been all over the world.”

“I’d worry too much.”

“I would for you too.”

“OK. Let’s go.”

“No,” I said, genuinely tired, after she got the will to sit up.

“What’re we doing tomorrow?”

“Bottleneck Beach,” I said, “Or Kho Tao. This island ain’t no great shakes.”

“Let’s go.”

She went to arrange the morning taxi. I lay in bed, thinking. I’ve come halfway around the world, heard about full moon parties since 1989 – and I’m a taxi-ride away. I figured, at 9:15, it was safe to come out, the taxi had gone. When I got to the bar, Tracey asked if I wanted to go, the taxi was there.

“Okay.”

The taxi turned out to be a pickup truck full of 11 partiers playing Twister in the back. Arms and legs akimbo and smothered by each other, they were curiously subdued for folks with an 80% chance of being flung from a suspensionless death trap for the sake of a full moon freak out fuckup fest. We rode in front with a one-eyed driver well past his prime and Stacey from London who greeted us with a perky “Hullo!” Too perky.

“London, Ontario?” I asked.

“London, England.”

“Meh. Paris is better. The French are so friendly.” She gawped, I red herringed.

“What’s that animal?”

“Dog,” the driver said.

“I’m pretty sure it was a wolf.”

“Dog.”

I pointed at a cat. “What’s that critter?”

“A cat,” the driver said, swerving to miss the ditch then checking the rearview mirrors.

“I’m pretty sure it was a giant rat. Hey what’s that!?”

I pointed into the brush. No animal. Nothing. No answer. Even Tracey shot me a look. I shrugged and whispered, “There’s a whiff of mischief in the air. Can you smell it?”

“I smell bullshit.”

I smiled, and resurrected the conversation which was going so poorly I was determined to drive it into the ground and memorialize with a tombstone that read, ‘This Conversation Sucked. Stacey will never forget it.’ I don’t know why. Sometimes I just like to fuck with people. Especially when they don’t get it.

“So Stacey, what part of London you from?”

“East End.”

“East End, oh that’s nice. Jack the Ripper’s neighborhood.”

“I suppose so.”

“Kray Twins too.”

“Yep,” she said, unenthusiastically.

“Do you know them?”

“Not personally.”

“Ruthless gangsters,” I explained to Tracey. “Stacey, you know Karl Marx?”

“Not personally.” She wasn’t trying very hard. Her excitement had drained out the floorboard. That was a good sign. I was doing well.

“He was a tour guide in the East End for 10 years before he went on to become a Marx brother.”

“You seem to know a lot about the East End,” Stacey said.

“Cher got a place in The Docklands. Do you know Cher?”

“I know her brother.”

Damn. Now she was trying. I lost.

We got there and unloaded.

“Hey!” I pointed, “Full moon!”

“You are daft,” Stacey said. Double damn.

“You know when the little boy kicks the back of the little girl’s chair?” Tracey asked.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

She rolled her eyes at me.

“She was cute,” I admitted, “but truly daft. I couldn’t let that go unchallenged.”

We followed the herd to the beach, silver in the full moonlight, and to Roger’s Chillzone, for whomever out of the 15 of us was tripping their head off and needed a safe place to freak out. They all bought energy drinks in little bottles. I asked Raja if he could get E. He said he’d try so we gave him 500 baht and took off for a little while on our own.

One side of the beach, including the bars, was completely empty. The other totally packed. Bars competed for loudest, most obnoxious techno “music,” while people sat out in front in clusters. We sat at a low table Japanese-style on the beach and ordered beer and Coke. I was getting buzzed. The people at the next table had rubber jaws that flapped incessantly. Someone took a picture of them and when the flash went off I noticed how pasty and sweaty they looked, speed-mouth chomping on their gums. They wouldn’t be too pleased with that shot.

As we walked we saw a man at a bar dancing in front of other men, pouring hot candle wax all over his chest. Tracey said the full moon was the best thing about the party.

“What would you be doing if you were single?” she asked. “Probably tripping, running around, talking shit to people.”

“I guess, I’ve just been there.”

“Me too, but I still enjoy it.”

Some people danced under black lights that brought out the body paint. Zany.

“Some things,” I admitted, “are stupid.”

Tracey was quite bored with the whole thing so after an hour we went back to find the driver. On the way we saw a gay gang. Dancing, dressed to kill in make-up and heels, they were turning the crowd on.

We had to wait an hour for the driver who arrived at 12:30 sharp, as arranged, for 300 baht.

“I’m sorry,” she said, while we waited.

“For what?”

“For everything. For developing that film, and trying to find the post office, and coming down here when I didn’t want to and feeling like shit all the time. I feel like I’m always complaining. You’ve been so good.”

“I feel like I’ve been masking my petty emotions.”

“There are no petty emotions.”

“Yes there are.”

“Like what? It’s better to talk about them and get them out.”

“Well, jealousy isn’t the right word, but when you wear skimpy dresses and the wind whips it up and shows your ass.”

“I can’t control the wind.”

“That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

A Thai woman walked by that looked like my aunt.

“What else?”

“I hate it when other guys leer at you, and I know it’s stupid and has nothing to do with you. Sometimes they even yell while we hold hands.”

“I’ve been living with it my whole life.”

“I need to get over it.”

“What else?”

“Anger. That’s a big one.”

“If you didn’t get angry you wouldn’t be human.”

“But it makes me feel so stupid, and I hate it.”

“If you didn’t feel frustrated or angry on this trip I would be surprised. I’ve been sick this whole time, and I feel bad.”

“Don’t feel bad on top of feeling bad. This vacation hasn’t been ruined at all. I just want you to feel better.”

We stood there forever in the heat, she wanted to jump in half a dozen taxis. I insisted on waiting for our man.

“How do you know he’ll even come?”

“I just think he will.”

“Like all the others?”

“Even if we got a taxi, it wouldn’t go to the resort, nobody goes to the resort. In Thangsala we’d still have to find a ride all the way out there.”

“Ok,” she said, but she was sick. So sick.

I thought our man would get us all the way home, and that was the absolute necessity. When he finally showed up we jumped in the back of the pickup and held each other under the comforting silver moon and electric blue sky humming with cosmic energy. Up hill and dale and down glen and hollow, the pickup pitched and rolled through mountain and valley. On a rise you could see out across the Gulf of Thailand – the sea shimmering, islands far-off looking as Asia as it gets, framed in a million palm trees.

I dreamt that night we were in a taxi and asked to be let off in black magma flow. We ran down it with another couple. It was like a riverbed.

“Be careful,” I said, “If you wipe out on this...”

We came to some water.

“Get in,” Tracey told me.

I was scared and it was too hot.

“Go on.”

“Okay.”

“Hold on.”

I got in slowly and finally was in, she came in after me, once she was off the shelf of magma that had hardened, she held onto me and pushed me under. As I went under I pushed her between the legs, back up onto the shelf, then I pulled myself up.

She dreamt she was in the house she grew up in, but Jake, her ex-boyfriend, his mother who he still lived with in real life, and sister, were there. Tracey talked to his mom, he was gone. She was nice, but Tracey knew she was two-faced. She went to the get the rest of her stuff from his room, but couldn’t find much. She hurried out and joined me when she heard Jake yelling. He’s even a stalker in the subconscious realm.

On Friday, we got up at Sun Flower, woofed some breakfast, packed and got a ride into town where we settled into a café at the waterfront. I shit in a horrible hole in the ground, went to the bank, and got 5,000 baht or $150 from that nebulous cascade called Visa. Some day my house would cave in from debt. Play now, pay later.

I walked to the other side of town, soaked under my shirt and mailed off fifteen pounds of pictures that’d sent my pack off the scale into semi-trailer territory. A parade went through town with a pickup that carried a shrine on its back held by two boys freshly initiated as monks.

On my way back they’d stopped and unloaded at a veranda overlooking the water. About 30 people sat around. Two boys, about 12, started shoving each other a little. Then a little more. A fist flew lightly, then another harder. A taunt. A kick, another punch, harder, then quite a few. Someone said something, but no one intervened until one kid was jumped, knocked down, and wailed on. They pulled a kid cool off him. He got to his feet crying. I knew he’d never forget the time he got whipped in front of the town and cried. The town crier.

Back at the café, a fellow gave me a Bangkok Post. He had a moustache, sideburns, he liked the paper, saying, “they encapsulized everything.” He introduced himself, his name was Cash.

“Where you guys from?” he asked.

“Atlanta, Texas, L.A.”

“You know Bear Claw? I went to high school there, about an hour out of L.A. What are you reading?”

“Algren, gambling, prostitution.”

“I’m reading a book about the hookers of Patpong. Most of the time they have at least one kid. They’re married.”

“Must be fun for the husband.”

“In a lot of places, like Cuba, they’re respected. They make more than doctors.”

“Follows logically.”

“Yeah, guys come over, fall in love, want to marry them, with low self-esteem I guess. One place I went, you walk in and pick a number. Tell the bar the number of the girl you want, pay ‘em off, and take her to your hotel.”

“We expected more,” Tracey said. “It was pretty tame.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Eggs, ping pong balls. No pigs, chickens, ducks…”

“No waterfowl of any kind?”

“None.”

“What do you do?”

“Unemployed,” I said.

He gave me a high-five.

“It’s great if you can afford it. Which I can’t.”

“It’s the best. I’ve been away for seven months, five to go. I went to school for five years, landscape architecture, then I worked for Radio Shack for two years, 70 hours a week. I figured if you’re going to go to school, you might as well do the homework. Have you heard of ‘What the Bee Knows’?”

“No.”

“I’m reading that, and I have to write down all these words I don’t know. I’ve written down maybe 200.”

“The bee knows a lot.”

“Do you know how to spell phlegm?”

We did.

He shook his head.

“I had no idea.”

Cash got on the boat for Bangkok and we boarded the Kho Thao boat. See you down the line Cash. We slept most of the way. When I awoke the Love Boat was coming up on Fantasy Island, a rocky-shored, palm-enshrouded wonderland. I knew This Was It. Bungalows dotted hillsides on private lagoons, the water was clear as a plate-glass window to at least 20 feet. Coral refracted in the waves.

For 20 baht, a taxi driver agreed to take us to the south beach, which Sweeney recommended as less-crowded. We climbed into the back of the pickup with four Germans, a couple, and two guys with long hair – one with a tattoo of a castle, dragon, and the grim reaper from shoulder to elbow. He said they were going to Rocky Resort.

“Is it nice?” I asked him.

“Very nice.”

“Are there dragons?”

“I hope so.”

The area we were going to looked a little mangy, a massive water buffalo chowed in the jungle – litter proliferated. The driver got out.

“Rocky Resort,” I told him.

He went up and over a hill, through jungle, bouncing on a bad dirt road that came out into another cove. Sheer magic. At the end of the cove, a sandy beach. Rocky Resort was on the left arm, the other side of the cove, bouldered and emerald forested, palms only with one exception, a little resort no more than two rooms and an awning visible.

At Rocky Resort you first come upon the patio of the desk and restaurant, half- shaded, right on the water, then the winding path to the bungalows, few of which match. Some are woven walls, others white planks, all nestled in the landscape of boulders and cut grass, trees and tended flower beds. They’d worked with the land. Tin roofs, corrugated, little patios, all of them on stilts set in rocks and mortar, perched on rocks, the water at your doorstep.

We took the first one he showed us, A5. The porch was wood, dark brown paint, with a low railing of heavy branches. We set up Thermarests as couches and looked over the large boulder with the tree growing out of it to the most perfect view in the world. Maybe better than Greece. The cove, blue and green, depending on sand or coral, was ideal for snorkeling. A5 was a tiny hut, with just enough room for a double bed. The bathroom was tiled and clean, and had a Western toilet and fresh water shower. We loved it. It took us a week to find it, and days of hard travel, and sickness, but we knew, under the shade of the whispering tree, the water lapping the rocks right outside our door, we were here to stay.

We swam and ate and ate and swam and read and wrote and laid down and talked and laughed and felt so much better. Then we slept for ten hours.

Saturday morning, I slipped out of bed and into the water, pausing only to slide into shorts. I floated on my back for a very long time, looking at the bungalows nestled in the hillside. Tracey came out and we went for breakfast. I had sweet, strong coffee and French toast and Tracey had French toast and a pineapple shake.

She took a nap and I went for another swim, to the beach, as dark clouds rolled in. I picked up some trash as it started to rain. The rain came down slapping the sea and I swam out watching each drop plop and splash and drop again. A pitter-patter fresh shower of cool sheets. I found Tracey in the water and we held each other in the rain. I kissed and kissed her, and we floated weightless, her in my arms, my hands on her body. Everything alright forever.

At the bungalow, showered and fresh, we lay in bed with the windows and doors open, the breeze cooler after the rain, and made love softly, then harder. She cried afterward, our bodies pressed together, smiling. Then she fell asleep again, and I sat on the patio writing, watching the wind and rain.

October 19

The wind blew cool over my body as I awoke, and ants crawled on my back and butt. The sun glared bright orange off the opposite shore of the lagoon just as the day began. If I had film I’d take a picture, but went back to sleep so deep and comfortable. I dreamed I was Ray Liotta in a movie in which I had to kill a 3-year-old. Dennis Franz had molested her in the closet where we found her. I couldn’t find a gun that worked and I kept pulling the triggers, but they just click-click-clicked. I told her I couldn’t kill her. I took her gun away and learnt it was a bomb wired into all of society and she was a package sent to us to trip the explosion. I, Ray, received huge commendation in front of all society for the find. Then I awoke to more ants.

We lay in bed deciding what to do. We could stay here another week, move around the island, or spend a whole day of travel to get to Krabi. Then go over to Phuket and fly back to Bangkok. A week of laying around in paradise, and we said we’d take it easy in Thailand. Or should we see more the one time in our life we are here? Why is the human condition to move on even after you’ve found paradise? Eve probably bit the apple out of boredom.

The scuba diving here provided endless excellent spots. We could explore the whole island, very out of the way places. Coves with bungalows you could only get to by boat. The night dive the night before had been great – an octopus, cuttlefish, phosphorescence.

I waited an hour and a half for my porridge and it never came. I went back to the bungalow, annoyed, trapped, crowded. I felt like I had a chemical deficiency, maybe it was the coffee. I go stir crazy, inside myself. We took a swim.

I went back to the restaurant, unhopeful. Luran from Burma smiled, he forgot the porridge, very busy. Burma, I remembered, enslaved by the Japanese to build the Death Railway. He was tired, I guess that’s why he forgot the porridge. I had a cold Singha, the national beer of Thailand, which tastes vaguely like formaldehyde. Luran brought the fried rice and chicken quickly, which I smeared in my favorite sauce, ate hurriedly, read about junkies and Texas drifters, and the rain came, an immense blanket of infinitesimal threads and cooled everything down. Beautiful. The fat lady came in from the beach, as did half-a-dozen others, soaked.

Drenching cleansing absolution.

At breakfast I told Tracey, “You see those trees? That water? How pretty and green they are? They’re not as pretty as your green eyes.”

We laid in bed talking. There were more than clouds over us. “How do you feel?”

“Anxious, how do you feel?”

“I don’t know. Restless.”

“I’m so tired of being me, of my moods, emotions. I want to rip a hole in me and pour in something new,” I said. “I’m so tired of the pattern of this conversation – it’s the same weary tune. We ask each other how we feel but we never come to any new conclusions.”

“It’s underneath – and it’s -- I don’t know,” she said, “something you can’t describe directly. I’ve felt it in other relationships. And I want to learn what it is. I feel like I’ve let myself down. I’m disappointed in myself. I wanted to be strong and a pioneer for myself and I feel like I’ve been sick the whole time.”

“You can’t help it if you’ve felt bad. I just think maybe we should go on to Australia. Maybe if you had good food, decent accommodations, you’d feel better and be happy.”

“And so would you.”

This was back when we thought changing our external conditions would change our internal conditions.

I shrugged my shoulders. “When my stomach hurt for a few days I felt awful and yours has hurt for nearly a month.”

“I don’t want that, I love it here, it’s so beautiful.”

“It’s paradise.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“I feel sometimes like I’m too dependent on you for how I feel,” I said. “If you feel good – and I get positive messages from you, then I feel good, and if you’re not happy I’m not happy. It’s like in that dream I had the other night where you were pushing me under so I pushed you back to shore. I felt that way swimming.”

“Out here?”

“Yes, like the current was pushing me around and when you held onto me I couldn’t stand. I needed to plant my feet firmer or go with the current. I need to figure out what it is about myself to make me more comfortable in this relationship. It isn’t you personally, it’s not what you, Tracey, do, it’s just that you, Tracey, are the other. And I’m such a pleaser, that if you say something’s wrong, I extrapolate that you’re not happy. And if you’re not happy, then I’m not happy.”

“Just because I don’t like something doesn’t make everything bad.”

“I know, but regardless of reality, here’s my thinking: if you don’t like it, you’re not happy. Therefore, I’m not happy. I then make a conscious decision to try to make myself happy. I either succeed or fail. Then I try to make you happy and I either succeed or fail.”

“But you don’t have to. Men and women communicate differently. Women say it and it’s over. If I complain about the food that’s it, I don’t expect you to do anything. You try to find a solution but you don’t have to. I forget it just as fast.”

“In my thinking, which I need to change, I fail and fail because you feel bad and worse and I want to please you but I just can’t. So every time you don’t like the food I get more and more annoyed.”

I agreed to bring down the mountain and she agreed to be proud of herself for hanging in there so sick, not knocking herself down.

The cheapskates turned off the power at 11 p.m. We could smell the sewage from all the craps all the tourists had taken. Tracey asked me to fan her. She’d pay by the minute. Didn’t matter how much.

“Five baht.”

“For 5 baht a minute I wave my index finger. Can you feel it?”

“The toilet stinks. Bad. I might go clean it out with my tongue.”

“I’ll give you a dollar.”

“A hundred.”

“Okay.”

“No.”

“Five hundred. Just lick it. A good size, l-l-lick.”

“A thousand.”

“Below the water line.”

“No way. I’d pay those porch monkeys to ride a bicycle to keep the generator going.”

“Don’t call the peasants porch monkeys.”

“This pillow is okay sometimes, and sometimes it hurts bad.”

“Try the other one.”

“I did. What’s in it?”

“Feathers all stuck together.”

“With fecal matter.”

“Scrapings from under the house, all stuck together with chicken shit. Try the other.”

“I did. This is the first pillow I ever put my head on at a 90-degree angle. It’s like laying up against a wall.”

“But it’s soft.”

“It’s fucking silky. I like it. Reminds me of jail.”

“I have to pee, again.”

“You oughta get used to it, you’re going to have to for a long time.”

“I have bugs crawling on my ass.”

“Is that your hand behind the pillow or something dead?”

“Must be something dead, ‘cause my hand’s over here. What does it feel like?”

“Feel it.”

“No way.”

“Maybe it’s my porridge.”

We figured out the Restaurant System. They take your order and put it on The Poker. If you get there last, your order is ready first. And if you order porridge, you never get it, period.

“Why did you order porridge? That’s gruel. As if the food isn’t bad enough.”

She turned on the flashlight and picked up her book about incest, molestation, and slaughtering pigs, her summer reading themes.

“What are you doing?”

“Me?”

“No. The other guy,” she said dryly.

October 20

Cute goes a long way, but enough of A-5. Without a fan the hot flashes of the menstrual cycle became unbearable for both of us. The ants won. Sir Knickerbocker, Dr. Strangely Knickerbocker, the most feared and revered cat of the South Seas, father to a million kittens, Saint Knickerbocker, the cat that saved a ship of drowning men and swam away with no need for thanks, Pirate Captain K-nick with the ferocious meow and broken tail, helped us move to B-6, then I threw him out because Tracey thought he’d pee on everything.

Then we thought we’d walk to town but they turned on the power and the fan came on so we laid in bed all afternoon reading and sleeping. Late in the afternoon, we finally went farther than Koh Tao Cottages. To the village, past and beyond, the trash and foul smells and crowded bungalows, to the restaurant where we finally ate. The oil drowned the vegetables and even I wouldn’t eat it. I put it back on the counter. We shared Tracey’s coconut soup with rice.

The lady came over. “No good?”

Fucking terrible. I would give it to your dog. My God! Who could eat it? The lives that were lost to eat that meal can never be replaced.

“Not really,” is what I said.

“It’s just like gambling,” Tracey said. The view, however, had been remarkable.

October 21

I lay in bed, in the dark, hoping she walked that dark road through the jungle safely.

“I’m a big girl,” was the last thing she said.

When she got over to the restaurant high up on the hill overlooking the cove, the lights of the resort flickered on the water. Dev asked Tracey where I was.

“We went diving today,” she told him, “He came up and got a headache. He still has it.”

“It’s bad?”

“He never lays around for hours and holds his head.”

“Just his head?”

“Yeah. His sinuses, he says, the left side. It happened before, a few weeks ago, in Indonesia, but it wasn’t this bad. I’m afraid he may have the bends.”

“Do his joints ache?”

“No. Just his head.”

The patrons filled the restaurant, lying back on pillows at low tables as cool wind came off the Gulf of Thailand. “And you did a safety stop?”

“Three minutes at five meters.”

“If he were bent, which I don’t think he is, you would probably be too.”

That reassured her, especially his English accent. Deveron, or Dev, had his own shop, a Thai wife, and one of the few Thai-Trub babies in the world, a smiley girl named Sari.

“Hold on a moment,” and he disappeared behind the bar. The Christmas lights twinkled off the liquor bottles. House played soft and low with a reggae rhythm, the wind in the emerald palms rounding out the sound. She could see me laying in that big bed with no cover sheet, holding my head in the fetal position, not saying a word.

Dev came back with three pills. These are antihistamines, they’ll unlock his nasal passageways. He should have some oxygen too, I’d give him some but I don’t have any. I think it won’t hurt, and it might just help.”

“Thanks Dev.”

“Anytime.”

Chai waited at his motorcycle. “Okay,” he asked Tracey, and smiled his nice smile.

“Yes,” she said. “Can you take me down to the village? It’ll be real fast.”

“Okay,” he said, and started the bike, revving it slightly.

She climbed on and put her arms around him, his thin frame made her feel like a big woman. He rode carefree but limber, and she felt safe taking the dirt road down, dipping into gullies, popping out the other side, until they got to the dive shop. A few dive-bums sat around a table smoking under a fluorescent light.

“I’m worried about my husband,” she said. It was the first time she used the word and it felt foreign to her tongue. “We dove this morning, and his head hurt when he came up and it won’t stop.”

“How deep did you go?”

“I don’t know, about 25-30 meters. We saw the whale shark and rushed down to it. We went down fast. It started hurting him then.”

“It usually hurts coming up.”

“So what do you think?”

“Safety stop?”

“Yes.”

“He’s got air or water trapped in his sinus cavities. Give it time.”

“It hurts so bad.”

“It shouldn’t get any worse.”

Chai drove her back to Rocky Resort, up and over the hill, down the other side, the headlight bouncing off the palm trunks and rooster pens. She could see the headline, “Tourist Killed By Coconut Tree.” She could see another headline, “Thai Tourist Diving Death.” She held on tighter. Chai pulled up and she climbed off thanking him in her one Thai phrase. It made her feel so helpless to depend on people she couldn’t talk to.

“Could I pay you to turn on the generator?” she asked the front desk clerk/bellboy/waiter/assistant manager with one cloudy eye.

He smiled. “Very busy. Work 24 hours.”

“What does that have to do with it? I’ll buy the gas. My husband’s very sick. Can we pay for electricity for the fan?”

He smiled, and looked down at his hands, picking the scabs before returning to the kitchen.

I was laying in the dark, on the bed, just as she left me. “Any better?”

“No,” I said. “An ant bit my ass, and I put my journal over it and hit it ten times. It had wings. I’m lucky it didn’t carry me off to its lair.” I rubbed my temples. “Mr. Knickerbocker has been keeping me company.” The cat circled into the cove of my body. “Saint K-nick, he’s a good boy.”

“Boy needs attention.”

“Yes, he does. What’d Dev say?”

“Doesn’t sound like the bends.”

“Thank God.”

“Here, take one of these,” she poured three pills out of the practice charts Dev had given her. And, she poured dozens of pills onto the bed from her vitamin bottle she’d stuck all over with stickers of stars, animals and hearts, took three in her palm and said “Take these too, Advil.”

“Thanks Lula. You’re a good nurse.”

“I’m worried about you. If you don’t feel better tomorrow we’re going to the hospital.”

“I don’t think there is one on this island. I feel like I’ve got a wedge in my head. I haven’t felt like this since I was hospitalized in high school.”

“That was different,” she said, knowing about the pills I’d taken from a friend’s parent’s medicine cabinet.

“What’d Dev say, anything else?”

“Sinuses. Said you could also use oxygen.”

“Like you said.”

We took a cold shower to cool off and got back in bed. I listened to the water lap the rocks while I tried to get comfortable, reduce the hammering in my skull, crush ants.

“Tourist Killed By Ant Attack.” Tracey had drifted off.

I lay there for three hours, until 2 o’clock in the morning. I got up, hot, hurting. The power was off. I couldn’t find a flashlight. I fiddled in my kit back for the matches, and found everything but. I threw it against the wall.

“Sorry,” I said, when Tracey awoke.

“I had to go tee-tee anyway. What’re you doing?”

“Looking for matches.”

When she came out of the bathroom she found the flashlight. Then she went over to the scattered things in the corner and found the matches that she’d set on the table along with the joint from the green bag.

“There you go baby.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling like a character from one of Nelson Algren’s stories, a desperate junkie so in pain he can stand another minute without his fix.

“I couldn’t find anything.”

I went out on the patio, sat down, and lit the joint looking at the stars. They were blurry without my glasses, but maybe more beautiful because of it. The water reflected the lights on the mainland and Ko Pha Ngan, the next island. The night felt alive. The joint went out halfway through and I went back in and laid down next to her.

“Better baby?”

“Yeah,” I said, and kissed her. I couldn’t wait to get back to bed to you.”

We kissed.

“Do you want to listen to the Walkman?”

“It’s on ‘Hallelujah.’”

“No, I’m going to sleep now,” and nearly no sooner than she said it, she was, I put on the headphones and listened to the song for the thousandth time, and the last thought I had before the fading out filled me like warm water, was how beautiful this woman was that I was going to marry.

October 23

A song played while we drove into Bangkok on a dirt road, “The Road to Hell.” In my pain, I was able to notice the whole town is made of trash and standing cess pools. If it isn’t one, it’s the other.

To make matters worse, we stayed at Khoa San Palace. It’s not so much of a Palace as a Shithole. Maybe you’re thinking of the Grand Palace. I was thinking of staying there, but I never got an invitation from the corrupt king. I’ll try to come back in the next life with more class.

I think Thailand is over-rated, but if one or the other of us hadn’t felt like dying the whole time we were here, we would’ve liked it more.

I’ve tried antihistamines, Advil, Paracetemal and some migraine pills the pharmacist gave me, but I’ve had this headache for three days and decided to claw out my brains.

October 24

Here’s a conversation I overheard in a bar. Two guys were talking about a movie poster.

“Dude. Look at the graphics of those blood splatters on the wall.”

“Dude. She almost looks real.”

“Dude. I’d fuck her if she was real.”

“Dude, she’d kill you if she was real.”

“I wouldn’t care if she killed me as long as she fucked me.”

Thus the enlightening nature of travel...

October 25

The man in the sick black coat. Cats that give birth and raise kittens in alleys. The sweeping in this city never stops, but it’s never gonna get this city clean either. How can so much wait staff make you wait so much? The tuk-tuk man lures you with the lie of a one-baht ride. They play “Amore” at the saddest bars. The restaurants play movies like “Shoot ‘Em 2,” “Bloody Carnage III,” and “Rampage V.” Vendors sell magazines like “Shiny Slits,” “Glistening Gashes,” and “Greasy Cunts.”

After choking down some “pizza” at the Hello Café, while an Ozzie geek tried to talk a Japanese woman old enough to be his mother into marriage, we went back to our little room at the Khao San Palace and smoked a joint in bed and giggled as thunder split the sky like God’s migraine. We giggled about how they told us at the Grand Palace not to point our feet at Buddha. It pisses him off.

The Grand Palace was gilt-ridden. Looking at all those gold demons and monkeys, you can’t help but wonder at whose expense they came. The King of Siam no longer lived there, so there was no point in tearing it down. Anything that helps the Thai people seems worthwhile to me, but I’d seen how the Thai people lived. I can’t imagine the nature of their poverty had changed in thousands of years.

What had the king done for them? Kept them from being invaded by other taxers? He sure didn’t build any roads.

Cavernous white buildings, most of which seemed to be held up by scaffolding and down by the elbows of employees, dot the Palace grounds. Nowhere else can you see demons in makeup, auspicious elephant gods, paraphernalia dedicated as offerings to emerald Buddhas, or a greater emotional range of the smiling fat guy. And don’t ever point your feet at him, because no matter how laid back he is, it really pisses him off.

After the Grand Palace, I decided we had to take a sewer taxi down the river to get back to Khao San Road – our hell away from hell. After a few close calls – getting sold boat rides for 300 baht each – eating gizzard and striped lizard tongue – we dot in line for a water taxi heading somewhere. Then a French Canadian with a little red goatee said the King was coming down the river. That explained the Coast Guard and the fact that we weren’t going anywhere. In the oppressive heat, Lula couldn’t stand upright. She sat down as I looked around and to my surprise, the river rats, true scavengers, pulled their means of subsistence out of the muck. A little crab here and a plank of wood there, some sort of plant life, fecal matter... We gave up on the King because he’s ugly anyway, and took a cab “home.”

By the time we made it out we had to change more money. I think everyone here is very nice. They’re very helpful. For next to nothing they will take your money off your hands and all the burden that go with the decision making. They should all be named “Good Price!”

In Patpong we ate dinner at a joint called Demoiselle’s, a frou-frou chou-chou affair with real live red wine, not the swill they usually serve in Thailand. It made Trace real happy. She likes good food from a place that’s clean. I tell her she’s a dreamer. She likes to sleep in silk sheets to dream, feed kitties with dried fish bought at the market, and give water to emaciated men who probably suffer something worse than starvation. She buys flowers from little girls and ankle bracelets and custom-fitted Chinese silks. She laughs at my impressions and goes on adventures to sex shows which turn out to be sexy not one whit.

After dinner we walked the streets past the clubs and invitations to be naughty – and women dressed uniformly as company hookers for bars and restaurants until the rain caught us out and a cab seemed the best alternative. He didn’t speak English and since our Thai phrasebook was long gone, hopes of communication landed towards nil.

Tracey wanted to see a sex show. The Banana. The Razor. The Ping Pongs. I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of it, she might sober up, so we hopped in a tuk-tuk and told the driver we wanted to see people “Doing it!”

The place had a front room where men watched TV and smoked professionally. It smelled like a thousand years of seedy deals. We paid 300 baht each, the default price for everything. The backroom was dark except for a spotlight on center stage where a woman with a receding hairline and a tattoo of herself when she had more hair, was shoving Ping Pong balls into her vagina.

Tracey kept her eyes down as we were shown through a crowd that consisted of men and women, including two American couples who were somebody’s suburban grandparents. We took seats in the front row and ordered drinks. We would need them.

The lady on stage jammed four ping pong balls up there and then one by one aimed for the glass between her feet. She’d make one, and then miss one, and it would go rolling off the stage and onto the floor in the crowd. No one would pick it up and she had to get down on the floor on her hands and knees and get it herself and would take a long time and everyone would order drinks and shift in their seats until she climbed back up there and stuffed it back in her pussy. This time the stakes would be higher and everyone hoped she made it. And when she finally got all four in the glass the crowd roared – I think with relief.

The next lady came on in a one-piece bathing suit and catatonically shuffled in front of a broken mirror for a while. I guess that got us worked up. Then she took off her suit and you could tell her age. Also, she had no butt. She fiddled around down there for a minute, then she found what she was looking for – a white string. She tugged on it, but no tampon came out, just a double-edged razor blade. And another, and another, and they just kept coming. There must’ve been twenty in all. Then we found out what the magazine was for. She ripped out a page and shredded it with one of the razors, which was met with a round of applause.

A girl looking a lot like a monkey came on and the house lights went down. The black lights made the ribbon she pulled out of herself glow, and she pulled and pulled, and pulled and pulled, and wrapped it around the four posts to make a corral for herself, but then she pulled out more and more. Next, No-Butt came back on with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter which she handed to a bald Arab. He and his wife blushed. No-Butt got down on her back in front of the broken mirror and stuck two cigarettes there. The Arab guy tried to pawn off the lighter but no one would take it. No-Butt got down in front of him. He gave her a light. She contracted her tummy and “breathed in,” then pushed and “breathed out,” smoking like a sailor. Then she stood up and walked gingerly around the stage, squeezing and puffing. She smoked ‘em right down to the butt.

It must’ve been somebody’s birthday because Receding Hairline and No-Butt brought out a birthday cake and lit the candles. Receding took off her bathing suit. No-Butt held up a balloon. Receding got down on the floor and stuck a tube up herself. Then the balloon popped. By the third balloon I realized there were pussy darts flying everywhere and thank God nobody was hurt. Then Receding pulled out the blowgun and blew out the candles with one “breath.” When she was done the Arabs and Japanese clapped and she joined two Germans sitting behind us. The one fellow looked proud to have her as his ‘girlfriend.’

Next, a lady who must’ve been entertaining the boys back in ‘Nam brought out two trays. She had a real wide part down the middle of her head, she’d worn out several teeth, and she looked like she’d been dragged behind a wagon. She tied her bikini bottom around one leg revealing pockmarks in her butt cheeks. Then the old lady took a bottle of Coca-Cola, always refreshing, and held it up. She yelled, “Coca-Cora,” which sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. She sucked on it, in her mouth, then stuck it up there. While she wore a doing-my-nails expression, she fucked herself with it. Then she jerked it hard and pulled the bottle out, with no top. The crowd went berserk. This was what they came to see. When she produced the top, the applause sounded like big waves breaking.

She got on the floor on her back and stuck the bottle in there and drank it. She took out the bottle and stood up and struck artistic and gymnastic poses. Then she inserted the bottle and refilled it, not wasting a sip. We clapped and clapped, and she yelled, “Coca-Cora,” and handed it to some fellow but he refused to accept it. As she was trying to pawn it off on somebody, I told my wife that she better not get any of it on us.

For her next trick, Old Lady took a banana off the tray and got down on her back and shoved it in and shot it out three times in quick succession. The fourth time she pinched her sinewy ass so much tighter that the banana hit the ceiling.

Like a baseball player calling his shot, she pointed to someone at the back of the crowd who said, “Me?” She got down and sucked it in and shot that shiny plastic banana to the back of the room where it hit the wall and fell unmenacingly to the floor. “Me” was relieved.

Old Lady curtsied like she had the lead role in “L’il Abner.” From her tray she took a blank piece of paper and a magic marker, then knelt down over the paper and licked the marker and jammed it in. The magic marker squeaked across the paper as she squirmed and rotated her hips, sacrificing herself for her art.

“I could do that,” Tracey said.

“I think you only do that when you’ve hit the bottom rung of the ladder,” I said.

Old Lady put on the final touches, held it up, and maniacally exclaimed, “Welcome to Thailand!”

She’d crotch drawn a man in glasses with a sinister smile. She looked very proud, and we all gave her a big round of applause, maybe because she put her bikini back on over her butt.

“So that’s it?” Tracey asked.

“That’s it,” I said, “And if I see anybody walking out of here with a hard-on, they need to be euthanized. They’re a menace to society.”

Joking aside, these girls were slaves.

The best thing about the whole evening had been the bottle of red wine at dinner.

The next morning found us at the Trang Hotel for a Sunday dim sum breaklunch. I recounted my dreams to Tracey as they brought out shrimp dumplings and pork balls and fish dumplings. I dreamt I was a prisoner at a sort of garage, but it was arbitrary. I could leave if I wanted to. So I did, and that set of a series of chain reactions, which caused the end of the world. A television screen filled my vision with a warhead landing on a burning planet and the words, “Catastrophe” in big, bright yellow letters. If that’s the end of the world, my attitude was, oh well. So what?

Tracey said that was my creativity.

In another dream I raced a motorcycle down a gravel road, nearly wrecking, as I knew I would, on every hill and turn. I finally crashed. I came to in a house. Tracey was there.

“I’m so hungry,” I said. I knew wrecking was my punishment for something I felt guilty about.

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“A long time baby,” she said. “You missed your birthday. But you’re alive.”

Walking back to the hotel to save money, we ran into Dominique and Virginia – our French dive instructor from Kho Thao and his girlfriend. He was heading back to France to run his restaurant for three years. Maybe that was his lucky number. He knocked a trinket off a vendor’s cart and she yelled at him to pay for it and he said fuck you.

They came up to the room and we sold them almost the last of our grass for 100 baht. He told us he’d burned his foot on Kho Thao and nearly lost it to infection. All the skin on his ankle was new and they’d done it with no anesthesia. They die of things here we normally get through.

“And don’t try to help a dying Thai,” he said, “his death will be on your head.”

I agreed not to. It was our last day in Bangkok, a city that would never be returned to nor missed, but not hated either. It’s not a place you become enamored with so much as enameled, like the fish jerky glazed with fly barf sold on sidewalks by ladies who wash their hands in toilet bowls.

“Could I get another bowl of vomit soup with fish balls? No, don’t wash your hands, that will tarnish the flavor.”

After a final meal at the Trang Hotel, a fried filet of sea bass with its feet firmly planted in mediocrity and a hamburger that finally drove Tracey insane and into the arms of starvation, we caught a cab through the sprawling metropolis that just never ends – dead taxi lots, shanty towns, apartment blocks and high-rises aspiring to greatness.

Smells – peppers so hot on the table they burn your eyes, or blown from a fan at a street vendor that hits you like mace, ginger and aging fish. Pollution. Rain. Urine. Tracey thinks Thai people are the most disgusting ever. When we got to the airport she couldn’t eat the soup or even the crème caramel. Nothing it seemed would keep her from starving.

The parting shot came when the Thai airways agent said we had to go pay $54 at the ticketing office. I’d been assured by our travel agent that we wouldn’t have to pay more.

“No,” she said, “You must pay.” I tried to pay her but she wouldn’t let me. I had to go to the ticket office. At the ticket office she told me it was $54/each, a total screw of $108. I instructed her to just take my money so I could leave and never come back.

Once they allowed us to get screwed by them, we found a café where Tracey ordered a chicken sandwich with cheese even though sandwiches don’t come with chicken and cheese. The man who brought the sandwich said no butter, no mayonnaise, but it was slathered in both.

“I’m so sick of this shit I could put a gun to my head and pull the trigger,” Tracey said.

The man shrugged. I shrugged. She thought I was mad at her. Maybe I was a little. She was so picky, but it’s true, the food, accommodation, travel, and people had all been categorically subpar and unsanitary.

“Thailand shmailand.”

The waiter promised to bring two pieces of white bread.

“Great,” she said of the pineapple shake.

“You pay,” a woman came up and told us, “Four hundred and seventy-seven baht.”

“For crap,” I said.

He brought out a sandwich with no mayo and no butter.

“I tell cook first time, no mayonnaise, no butter.” Even the waiter can’t get decent service.

“Much better,” Tracey said.

Thank God. Only 4, 691 miles to go. Thrown into the night sky...

I had achieved considerable debt, I pondered over three glasses of red wine, two JD and Cokes, a Singha, a muscle relaxant and a nasal decongestant, to the tune of $20,000. Come January 1, 1998, I’d be living back in L.A., the City of Angels, where you can’t find an angel. Los Angeles, the City of Industry. My aim was simple. Make a lot of money and work very little. So I figured, duh, write a screenplay. How about a fellow that’s 20K in debt. He’s fallen in love. He asks her to marry him. She agrees. Then he finds out her father is Satan, and if he makes the Devil’s daughter happy, he’ll be richly rewarded.

Our Aussie seatmate talked about the weather, had as much red wine as they could pour and passed out. Tracey said something stank as soon as he’d taken off his shoes. I laughed while trying not to let him see. He said, “It isn’t me is it?”

“No,” she said.

“It doesn’t smell like feet,” I said.

“I’ll tell you if it is,” she said, and she would.

Some other blokes shined a red light beam every few minutes on the movie screen, “The Jungle Book.” The sun came up about 3 a.m. Bangkok time, just as I was finally falling asleep.

I looked out the window at the Great Artesian Basin, ripples, and nothing but. No trees, nada. Names like Broken Hill, Wollongong and Whyalla appeared on the screen.

We finally passed customs, including the drug-Beagle – luckily Tracey had dumped the doobie on the train – changed money, caught the Express Bus to Central Station where we got the train across Sydney Harbour. I didn’t realize yes, one day, I’d be in Australia, crossing Harbour Bridge with a postcard view of the Opera House.

Everything I’d seen so far reminded me of London and L.A. – the palms, the ocean smell on the breeze, the quality of light, architecture, that brown brick they can’t get enough of in England. In the train station a sign says, “Way Out.” Totally.

I called Martin who we’d be staying with and he gave me directions.

“Too easy, mate.”

The cab driver knew right where it was. As soon as we got through the door Tracey threw the clothes in the washing machine and we jumped in the shower. Martin knocked on the door just as I got out and I ran down the hall.

“It’s locked,” I said, and turned to walk away. I opened it and he stood there grinning with a big hand stuck out. We embraced with a big how the hell are ya?

Then the washing machine flooded the hall because Tracey put a stopper in the sink to bleach some shirts a Thai lady had pinkified for her.

“Oh God!” Tracey yelled, “It’s flooding in here! Hi, I’m Tracey.”

“Nice to meet you.”

They shifted sopping towels and shoot hands, “No worries, no worries mate.”

He had on a suit and tie. The last time I’d seen him had been a hung-over day in Key West. We’d been out till the sun came out trying to steal yachts from the marina.

“How’s Lazza?”

Lazza is the name he had for my dad Larry, who I’d been traveling with. He liked my dad a lot, as well he should. He was a slow-moving old dude with a wry sense of humor and hell raising in his past. Martin, his older brother Tim, and their tall friend Stretchy, had been camping in a pick-up with a camper on the back.

Though I only knew them for two days, we’d become fast friends. And they’d made my father a Legend. They loved Lazza.

“Lazza, is he alright?”

“Sitting around,” I said. My father’s life was lived sub-surface. I could tell Martin he was watching TV and walks the dog, but it would never serve to explain the man. “He’s getting his oil changed. They take out his blood, clean it, and put it back in. His laziness will kill him. He loves Southern fried food, ribs, barbecue, but otherwise he’s fine.”

It’s odd that you can know someone your entire life and have less than twenty words to say about them.

“What have you been doing the last two years?”

“Is that how long it’s been?”

“Year-and-a-half.”

“Lot’s happened.”

“I’d say, mate.”

I gave him the rough sketch, the while-you-eat-toast-and-beans-before-going-back-to-work sketch; Trek America, U.S., Canada, Mexico, Belize, falling in love, Guatemala, Honduras, L.A., Trek America, Indonesia, Thailand, Sydney... He worked in an office for the king of chocolate bars.

After he left we fell into two little comas for four hours. He came home with steaks and fired up the barbie. Emma, his flat mate, came home, and so did Amy, who lived there too. She came over from England 6 weeks ago to sleep on the floor a few nights. The three of them have lived in this flat for one week. It’s just like an English flat, high ceilings, colicky toilet, dank, no yard.

Gribsy came too, and he likes to talk, but he’s not very good at it. He figures he makes up for quality with quantity.

“The old man met the Queen last week. He sat next to Duke Bloubard who was in fine form about the Asians. He said they needed blue-blood immigrants instead of the old slant-eyes.”

Since we’d just arrived in Australia, he felt compelled to assume the role of cultural attaché and inform us of various members of parliament, the rail monopolies, Canberra’s various attractions, several itineraries for getting there, the Asian markets, accounting (his field), chemical containers and other subjects of even less value. Tracey never heard a word he said. I got tired of smiling and nodding.

He talked while the TV was on. We watched a show called Race Around the World and ten young contestants are given a video camera, $10,000 and every ten days they have to film, edit, and submit a four-minute video clip in a different place around the world. John Sefern was by far the cleverest. He streaked through Jerusalem, had plaques made stating Walt Disney was an anti-Semite who attended Nazi meetings prior to WWII, and stuck them on walls at Disney, which he broke into. He got baptized by Black missionaries in an African river wearing a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks T-shirt. Back in the studio for the wrap up, they asked what he thought.

“I think the world’s overrated.”

You got that Grimsby?

We slept until 1 p.m. the next day. Left the house at 2:30. Circular Quay is ferries. The Rocks ain’t such a big deal. An old pervert sold Tracey some herbal medicine, the $25 bottle.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked me.

“If it’s not too personal.”

“Do you love her?”

“Oh God,” I said, and turned and walked away,

“If you do, then she’s worth it. I’m 76, but I take good medicine and when I hug a pretty young lady,” he held Tracey, “I feel 27.”

“Let’s go.”

We ate at the G’Day Café. Solidly mediocre. It was that or $20 pasta. The lasagna tasted like the high school cafeteria. The beets couldn’t help it, the shredded carrots just plain sucked.

Tracey said the Opera House looks like a community college.

On “The Bay and Bondi Tour,” we learned lots of fun facts. D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain, and Robert Louis Stevenson all stayed in bohemian King’s Cross. Woolomoloo – loo – in the 20’s and 30’s – was gangs, aka the loo – black roo. Rushcutter’s Bay is a swanky marina amongst “Upmarket Eastern suburban areas.” Darlking Point has two fresh streams. Tacky high rises were home to people like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Swift’s House cost $11 million and Darwin came here for dinner. Elton John married at Saint Mark’s. It was featured in Muriel’s Wedding. Double Bay is an “Exclusive Shopping Area.”

Ritz Carlton is where George Bush stayed “clean and tidy” and it’s “Home to some very rich people,” “need lots of cash, checks, and credit cards to shop here,” “BMW’s give you an idea of the financial set-up down here,” “You can imagine the price tags down here,” and “Double Bay, Double Pay.” Also, “They have chairs in the shops to sit you down before they show you the price tags.”

Woollahera Point. Rose Bay saw their first commercial flights in 1938, 328 pounds, 29 stops, 10 days, including a lake in Iraq. The golf course is “very upmarket,” you practically have to be born into it. Rose Bay Convent -- “very upmarket,” 1-2 million a house. Vauchuse House has Pompeii Tile from Garibaldi given to Wentworth (William Charles). “Apparently families picnic on the beach in the summer months,” we were told. Wentworth was one of three white people to first cross the Blue Mountains. Watson’s Bay was first settled by Doyle’s Restaurant. At Gap Park 8/28/1857, Dunbar wrecked on the rocks – one survivor. People like to commit suicide there. Bondi is aboriginal for breaking of waves. In 1903, it experienced its first sunbathing. Kingsfordsmith nearly drowned there. In 1929, they had two shark attacks in the same week. They use shark nets Thallelen Beach. Cooger Beach is Aboriginal for smell of rotting seaweed – later, “agriculture.”

We spent $60 on lunch. Tracey needed a treat after learning that her commercial agent let her go. She needed some good food. Some cheering up. I had a skillet of mussels in red wine and shallot sauce. It took the panorama camera to get it all in. I’d never heard anyone with the Italo-Australian accent like the waiter had.

We shopped at the grocery store where everything is of course exactly different than back home in the most wonderful ways on the way home and Tracey made pasta with dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and herbs, with an especially great salad. As we cut veggies I told her I figured out how to deal with these Aussies. “When they say, ‘G’day mate, how’re ya goin?’ You say, ‘Going to hell, Christ on a bike, what does it look like?’

‘No worries.’

‘No worries ain’t going to fix my kid’s hernia.’

‘Too easy, mate.’

‘Do I look like I’m trying to mate with you?’”

Yes they really throw shrimp on the barbie and steak

The second night they had the dinner party. On hearing we were going to New Zealand, a tan Aussie girl asked, “Why do you want to go there? I hate their accent – there’s nothing there – the cities are dirty messes with nothing but a bunch of Maori’s walking around them.”

“What’s a Maori?” Tracey asked.

“Like American Indians. Big bastards that’ll beat you up.”

She hadn’t been there in 20 years and she couldn’t be over 24.

Her fiancé Angus said it was backward. Sarah asked compared to what?

“The back of the Outback.”

“The English say that about us.”

“What do you want to see?” Angus asked.

“Glaciers,” I said, a red herring.

“Fair enough then.”

“Are there any in November?” asked his fiancé.

“They’re always there,” Angus said.

“That’s why they’re called glaciers,” I added.

So that’s a red herring, a dipshit, and Captain Obvious in a nutshell.

October 29

King’s Cross is sufficiently seedy. The hookers have scabs on their faces, or powder-caking acne. Alcoholics sprawl on sidewalks, horseracing bars, strip shows, every other doorway. The area has charm. We spent two hours shyly browsing a sex shop. Hard to believe what people will do for a living. Dress up like old ladies and get fisted. Getting shit on is probably the worst. Quite disgusting, amusing, and even, sometimes, rarely, arousing.

As long as I live though I’ll never forget Tracey walking through the North Sydney train station with a vibrator in her underwear, people craning their necks looking for that humming noise.

We were dirty from a long day in the big city so we hopped in the tub. We thought they were gone. We made quite a ruckus. They were all right outside the door sitting in the kitchen the whole time sitting in stony silence when we came out an hour later.

Sarah, another guest-friend, made curry, Tracey’s favorite. She’d sworn off Asian after Asia. Martin said they were going to some races where they dress up in silly outfits and get very drunk and it would be a good idea to go to Melbourne on Thursday because they were all leaving and had no house insurance. Evicted.

Martin said we’d caught him in a bad week, which made me feel better. After dinner he had to go back to work, so did Emma, and Amy went out drinking. She’d started the day with a cocktail at 7 a.m., and takes drinks to bed.

Emma explained Australians. They’re different because they’re Antipodean. That’s upside down. That’s why the toilet water flushes the opposite way.

Martin said we’d caught him in a bad week, which made me feel better. After dinner he had to go back to work, so did Emma, and Amy went out drinking. She’d started the day with a cocktail at 7 a.m., and takes drinks to bed.

Emma explained Australians. They’re different because they’re Antipodean. That’s upside down. That’s why the toilet water flushes the opposite way.

I asked Martin what he did at Nestle.

“I sell the shit, mate.”

“Do journalists call you and ask for the latest news?”

“Not really, mate. Unless something goes wrong. Rat tail in a Kit Kat.”

“Not-quite-perfect the break?”

“That’s it, mate, that’s it.”

The times Tracey and I have been screwing around they catch us. We took a bath and were screwing around in the bathroom and thought everyone was gone, but they were all sitting in the kitchen on the other side of the door, stonily silent when we came out after an hour.

October 30

In Sydney’s fine establishment, The CB Private Hotel, many people have smoked in Room 136, convenient to the Gents. It has a picture of a dirt road leading up to two country houses, and kids fly kites under a power pole that looks like The Cross. It’s done in the sort of cartoon that could only make someone who needs something feel anything. The view is a link of fence topped with three strands of barbed wire and a fire escape. There’s a kettle and two cups for tea. If I had any tea I’d make a cup, and if I had any sugar I’d add that too. I put some water in the cup and rubbed the bottom but found I could not remove a film I could not discern. I locked Tracey in and went to the front desk. Five men sat about in various stages of decay chatting. I wondered if their orange blankets clashed with the rosy-checked carpet someone had got on sale off a Romanian freighter that docked late at night or early in the morning, and if they could crawl out onto the fire escape and into my window, and if I could hear Tracey scream from the front desk while the front desk clerk said, “No worries, mate.” A waif passed by, ready for bed in his green sweat pants and light blue sweater. His arms and legs barely moved, like he was made of balsa. He sat by the candy machine, though he had nothing to read. In the common room, the five men discussed a sixth.

“The one in the corner?” a fellow asked. A plastic container of yellow rice and a Coke sat on the table. I knew I was a one-nighter, and I knew they knew it too. The buses and trains that brought them here came from Parramatta, Redfern, Tomgabbee, or Erme Plains, Mackey or Mascot. Maybe they worked at the docks, had a line at the Kero Club, paid for their rooms in cash, by the week, by the night. Tracey lay in bed reading. We listened to throwing bodies off the roof for a while then to make up for all the money we were saving went out for fried snapper, French fries, and oysters with avocadoes and melted cheese and the City Lights Cruise around the Harbour.

November 1

Sydney’s Kingsfordsmith Airport, 7:25 a.m. I’m having a coffee and lemon, poppy seed muffin, pondering the last 24 hours. Tracey’s shopping.

Some bastard with a hammer and electric saw ruddy woke us up at the CB Private Hotel. I thought he was pounding on my head. I wanted to go to the window and asked, “Could you please shut the fuck up?” But I thought the whole construction site out our window would be behind him.

Tracey got out of bed and asked, “Could you please wait a few hours, it’s 7:30.”

“No,” the fellow fixing the Ladies said.

Progress requires sacrifice. I put the pillow over my head and pretended it wasn’t true. That I only had 6 hours sleep. We’d stayed up talking about Katy picking up Tracey from camp when she 13, notifying her en route to their new home Dallas that there was a divorce in the works too. Displacement down spiraled into alienation until she was able to liberate herself from that cesspit of amoral mouth breathers where they killed Kennedy to stay weird in Austin till she moved to L.A.

Tracey crawled to the shower before I could even start complaining about anything and came back and said she was hungry, she wanted a fruit plate. She loves to shop too. She became an authority on everything in the whole world because she reads all the labels of everything she buys. (Could I say I love you January, would that change anything?) She is an accomplished consumer, a capitalist’s dream, the Fall of Marxism. She bought a pair of white shades that nearly make her burst her side when I put them on.

Tracey asked what I was going to do with the boomerang I bought.

“Hunt.”

“Hunt what?”

“Food. I will hunt food, and think of the money I will save.”

I was shocked and pleasantly surprised when they didn’t take it away from me at security. It got through the X-Ray and all the scanners. I guess they don’t consider it a weapon.

We found a café and got Tracey a fruit salad, a focaccia sandwich with avocado, no butter, mayo or mustard, and with Camembert cheese. She can be picky. She called Kathleen out in Saint Mary’s, a suburb of Sydney, and the man at the café said, “Ooh it’s hot out there.”

Ohh, Tracey Tracey Tracey Tracey this that and the other, Kathleen said. She was so excited to hear from her. We voted on skipping the aquarium mainly out of grouchy exhaustion.

We took the 10:34 out of Central Street. The rickety 1950’s railcar rocked back and forth through the suburbs and Tracey fell asleep. I read the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

St. Mary’s, due east and a few miles from the foothills of the hazy Blue Mountains, is hot. It’s what you might imagine Australia would be like, dry. We passed St. Mary’s high street, kebabs, fish and chips, Outback BBQ For Lease, a liquor store. At the station, I woke up Tracey.

“This is it,” she said, coming to.

We followed a man with a wig off and a Japanese man brought her pack to the platform as the dust settled. We took a cab, cashed more money, Tracey bought flowers, and we arrived at Kathleen Johnston’s at 11:15, next to a kindergarten with kids playing in the yard around concrete tunnels.

Standing five foot two with her curly brown hair she had done twice a week, Kathleen looked like you could’ve blown her over with a sneeze. Her mouth hung open when she saw us, and she embraced us as through she’d waited 50 years for that hug. She lived in her grandmother’s brick ranch and welcomed us into air-conditioned splendor.

“I’m afraid I have to be honest with you,” she said, picking up her cane, “I didn’t want to answer the door with my stick, but I’ve got one leg that’s longer than the other due to an accident I had as a result of a dog. You would like something cold and nice to drink wouldn’t you?”

Kathleen met Tracey’s great-grandfather Bill Shattuck at a dance during World War II. Bill’s ship was stationed off New Zealand and Australia, he worked in the boiler room, an explosion had left his hands scarred, and he was self-conscious about them. One night in 1943 a friend invited Kathleen to a dance at a Red Cross canteen and they met two U.S. Navy sailors.

“There was nothing romantic about it,” she told us in her parlour as Forties hits belted out of the ghetto blaster. “But he did keep my interest, you know. Normally I just couldn’t be bothered. We talked for hours. Then he asked if he could write. I figured there’d be no harm in that – and didn’t expect to hear from him.”

When he got back to tiny Alto, Texas with little brick ranch houses not that different from Kathleen’s in tiny St Mary’s, he wrote to her. To his surprise, she wrote back. For 50 years.

“His mum Dessie wrote a couple of times, too,” Kathleen said. “But every Christmas there’d be a letter with pictures from Bill. He wrote when he got married, when he had your grandmother.”

“Katy.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Do you have any of the pictures?” Tracey asked.

“Oh somewhere. I have bags of photos.” She spent a lot of time on the o’s in photos. “I have three kids of my own, and ten grandchildren, so the photos,” she pointed to the mantle over a heater – heaps of proud parents and smiling kids – “are all mixed in large bags.”

Kathleen was witness to that sapling grow into an enormous family tree with great-grandchildren. She knew all the births, marriages, divorces, and deaths as well as or slightly better than anybody in the family.

She never left Australia, and Bill only left the States to go on Alaskan and Caribbean cruises. He and Nanny talked about going to Australia, but he wouldn’t fly, and it was so far.

“Nanny didn’t know how to break it to you for a few months,” Tracey said.

Kathleen’s face crumpled. “I’m so sorry about your grandfather,” she said teary. “And your grandmother.”

“Thank you,” Tracey said, teary. “Nanny called him for dinner. He didn’t answer. She went to look beyond the hedges. He was face up under a maple. I just can’t believe that’s as good as it gets.”

November 1

The first glimpse from the plane we see – snow-covered mountaintops halting ominous clouds from the east – clear to the west. That is New Zealand.

Christchurch

Our Mission: Contact Carlos

Customs. Baggage claim. Maui Van Rentals.

“It’s awfully squatty,” Tracey said.

“But it’s hunkered down, tough, like Sasquatch.”

“Squatchy!” she christened the mini-all-in-one campervan, our home for the next three-and-a-half weeks.

We found Carlos and his wife Amy and four kids. Amy wanted to come with us. She’d never seen much New Zealand really. The oldest had the flu. Edwina and her friend told us where we could swim with dolphins. Carlos came home, we had a coffee, and opposed to what our friends back in Sydney (Gregory the road manager of AC/DC and his mum) told us, Carlos rather enjoyed awkward silence. Aborting Mission Carlos. We set off on our own.

We listened to Crosby, Stills, and Nash on the way south from Christchurch. An hour-and-a-half later, the sun set about 8:30, and it stayed vaguely light, black clouds with a faint blue sky until 9:15. We’re not so far from Antarctica. I used to look at the ground. Now I look at the sky.

I don’t know where we are. I just pulled off on the side of the road in the dark. Tracey’s cutting mushrooms. I’m drinking red wine. We’re listening to Astral Weeks. The water’s boiling for spinach ravioli.

“Life survives,” Tracey said over ravioli. “Life is life. It has a mind of its own and will survive. All life is one life in different forms. There are many expressions. Love is love and fear is fear. There are two emotions, love and fear and they’re hard to feel simultaneously, and every other emotion besides love can be turned to fear and if there was love there wouldn’t be fear.”

I wonder about Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, if you’ll live again and again. A, B, Z... A, B, Z... Is life love, fear and death? The ancient Greek definition of sin means to miss the mark. I guess unless you can forgive yourself, you’re in hell.

November 2

I cracked the curtains early to fog but by the time I got out of bed the blue was the bluest. Bushes flowered yellow – maybe goldenrods – and huge gum trees and a few pine speckled the rest area. Cup of coffee in hand, I walked over the hill and found a river. Off to the west, snow-covered mountains, the air cool like fall (or as in this case, Spring). I washed my face in the river and I’m so glad to be here. I love this country! It’s like a baptism.

The Mexican is almost ready. We’re having tacos with avocado and spring onions and chicken, overlooking the Pacific. It’s just gone dark, and we parked on a cliff on a little pull out from the road, south of Brighton, a small town south of Dunedin. I slept. Tracey shopped. Pigs saying eat pork and cows mooing made her sad. She said they had lamb tongues in jelly, ox testicles and tongues, and lamb genitals. We thought Kiwis were so civilized. We rested in bed with the surf crashing, and now we’re gearing up for a feast.

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. The energy of this trip has changed so much, as Tracey said. The ride today, beautiful along the coastline. The water has a green tint like the moraine water in Canada. We stopped at The Moeraki Boulders, a 10-minute hike to the beach. These rocks were formed like pearls and lay like round eggs in the sand.

We stopped in Oumaru’s historic Victorian district, antique shopping. We bought fried dough off a Dutch lady and looked at arts and craps. After The Boulders we went out to the lighthouse and walked to the end of the peninsula at Hampden. Lots of sheep. And foals. Ducks in the water, rolling hills, kelp – a lone fisherman with his shirt off – and hillsides of yellow flowering bushes – fog and clouds later in the afternoon.

November 3

The view from Nugget Point astonishes me. I’m sitting on the bed in the back of Squatchy and Tracey’s making lunch. The water’s far down the cliff, bright green and dark blue. It rains as the sun shines and the wind’s blown the bushes like brushed hair. The gusts nearly blew us off the road between Morton and Balcluth. I asked in the Stationary Supply if they had a travel guide and she said no, or if they had a paper from the States, and she said, “We’re only wee Morton.” At a thrift store, we bought two pairs of sweat pants, a sweat jacket, a plaid shirt, and a fuzzy blue overcoat that’s quite comical for $13, total.

At the Balclutha crossroads, we decided to take “The Southern Scenic Route” through the Catlins, along the coast, right round the southern edge of the island, the end of the world until Antarctica. What’s a day? It’s off the beaten track. We’ll get there.

This coast is as beautiful as any I’ve ever seen. Green like Ireland, rugged like California, cottages like England, reminiscent of the Gaspé Peninsula, some with bright red, corrugated tin roofs. Hills roll down to sandy beaches and tidal pools, kelp beds undulating in the surf. We passed a point with three breaks, waves crashing white in every direction. We’ve probably driven 30 miles on gravel roads today, passing one tractor in several hours. I am so happy. I love it here, with Tracey. This time.

At Cathedral Caves we met Wolf of Munich, and Joan of Jacksonville, Florida. The Maori left between 1600-1800 because of the “Maeroero – the wild yeti-like creature of the Tautulu bush, reputed to snatch children and young women,” the AA explorer guidebook, the only one we were finally able to buy, said. Joan and Wolf met in Mississippi as members of The Sierra Club. We taught Wolf the definition of “cheesy.” He’d never heard of The Brady Bunch so it was hard.

Also, New Zealand used to be part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland. They are mighty proud of that. Lots of flags everywhere.

After we left Cathedral Caves, unwilling to wait until low tide at 10 p.m. or 10 a.m., we ventured down the road, winding in and out of valleys, up and over hill after hill, sheep running in terror, their lambs at their heels. A fork in the road, Invercargill or Porpoise Bay? It was getting late, about 8 p.m., and the sun set over the hills in front of us. Tracey took a picture of a cemetery with the bay in the background. The dolphin information center was closed. I said, “Around that bend, there’ll be the coast and we’ll find a place for the night there.”

Over the rise, the bay to the left, the road took a right and at the crest of the hill a spectacular expanse of white sand and waves. A house – Ian Meredith Just Married – on the barn. Following a sandy beach with houses perched atop, I had a hunch the perfect place for us to stop would present itself. A sign asked, Curio Bay or on to Fortrose along the coast road 34 km? My instincts said stay along the water, and the coast road headed inland. Curio Bay, a kilometer, and a yawning stretch of open mouth bay with a point out at the southern tip. Squatchy headed for the peninsula. Another fork, to the right, Petrified Forest, to the left, a campground. Ten bucks with power, $7.50 without. I drove up to the peninsula, a steep hill, surrounded 300 degrees by water. An old couple watched the sun set in a little red car. They watched me pull up with amusement.

“I’m going to take a picture and will decide what to do,” I explained to them.

I could barely open the door for the wind and leaned into it to walk. If I peed I would’ve been covered head to toe. With the wind I could’ve peed to the North Island. We had the bay to the west, open white-capped ocean to the east, and a cliff and jagged coast with a rocky outcrop to the south. I took a picture and went back inside and told her this is it. I drove in a few circles on the top of the hill to find a level spot, then parked – the big back bay window facing the dramatic south view. Tracey opened the door and it flew out of her hand and slammed. I wrestled it shut and she propped on the pillows looking out the window and said, “This is one of those times you wonder what you did to deserve this.”

“I’m going back out to take more pictures,” I said. The couple had left and we had the peninsula all to ourselves. I headed into the wind. The clouds were pink from the sun set and a sliver moon hung above. Waves crashed and sprayed 20 feet high beneath me as I stood on the edge of the cliff. Sand stung my face – I braced against the wind, barely able to stable the camera. The waves pounded and roared. I ran back to Squatchy and forced the door open and laid down on the bed with Lula. I held her face in my cold hands and said, “I love you.” Then, “I hope Squatchy doesn’t blow away.”

“That would be so scary,” she said, “Do you think he will?”

“No, I put on the emergency brake.”

“That’s reassuring.”

We ate angel hair pasta with sun-dried tomato and chicken sausage, with a salad, and a glass of red wine. Unbelievable.

November 4

Curio Bay – Morning walk down to the rock, crashing symphony. The seagull could barely keep the hill. The petrified forest held wonders for me – silicone logs 50 feet long and 180 million years old. The rain pelted me as I gaped at the stumps, time’s tombstones, and tidal pools on the muddy low-tide shelf, too mesmerized to miss a snail.

We showered for the first time in five days and filled up the water tank, a necessity. I talked to the fellow who ran the campground – real green eyes and a goatee, shaggy gray hair. He had a bad back from sheering sheep and had travelled to Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, and through Australia, and never saw anything as beautiful as New Zealand. “I watch the dolphins swim in the waves of Porpoise Bay nearly every day, and you can’t swim there,” he said, “they might swim with you.”

We drove through Tokanui, Fortrose, and stopped in Invercargill – a pleasant city with lots of bars and not a building over two stories. “Sheep and rain,” the New Zealand Auto Association Guidebook said. We saw sheep, and we saw rain.

The kid who pumped the gas said Kiwis thought Curio Bay was run-of-the-mill, “if we liked that...” He was kind, as was the lady who gave us maps, and the lady at the bookstore, and the Salvation Army shop – the last said she didn’t have any big clothes ‘cause men didn’t give ‘em away the way women did – they wore ‘em out.

We took the 6 to 99 by the coast in 90 mph winds. Squatchy wasn’t so much a car as a kite. My arms tired keeping him on the road through Wallacetown, Riverton, and Orepuki, a short stop at McCracker’s Rest Area with seven sets of waves rolling in and nothing between you and Antarctica. It looked like the kind of ocean that inspired Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Lula lay down – she’s been real tired trying to figure out what to do with her life and still a little stomachy from Bali and Thailand. She likes to sleep in the back while I drive and I sing to The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Van Morrison and Mazzy Star right through Tuatepere and sleepy Clifden – “Sausage Capital of New Zealand” -- over rolling hills, sometimes arid, up to Manapouri and its great lake, nestled in the arms of snowy mountains.

We pressed on to Te Anau and its lakes, in the crib of Fiordland National Park’s white, somber mountains. Flash motels and flight and cruise businesses were advertised everywhere. We followed along the windswept lake looking for a home on the way to Milford Sound until we saw the sign for Henry’s Creek, camping. I pulled down the gravel track that took us to a lush forest beside the lake sheltered from the road. It went on and on and I pushed. Not a soul was back there – to the end, where Henry’s Creek flowed into Te Anau Lake under the watch of great mountains. The lake in fact was big enough to have rolling waves and cold enough to numb your finger. I backed Squatchy into another best view in the world.

But Lula didn’t feel good. She’d been a recluse, she said, but it hadn’t helped her figure out what she wanted to do with her life and now, nearing 25 in seven days, she felt like she’d failed herself. She was not only not going to win the race, but she’d dropped out. She hadn’t written the song she wanted to by her birthday, and it was all coming down.

It’s a stage in the creative process. I didn’t have my novel at 25, past when I would have liked, but putting too much pressure and crushing myself would not help. And I’d felt the infinite sadness that 1) I avoided with humor, 2) tried not to think about, and 3) took as part of the natural cycle – the emotional roller coaster of life. And 4) life. I’d been pretty busy, and this trip was the stuff of legends.

We napped as the sun set then ate Portobello mushrooms, zucchini, onions, bread crumbs and baked cheese in Worcestershire Sauce and mashed potatoes, with Speight’s Dark Malt in accompaniment.

“You are going to be depressed through life are you?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, “Do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not depressed. I’m just caught up in my own thoughts.”

“I don’t think you will be – or I will be.”

“I like to think I’m a happy person.”

“I do too.”

We are. But there is that dark sadness, the sneak anxiety, a personal cloud that passes above us, just as there are full and complete rainbows like we saw over golden fields today.

“Hey,” she said, “you’re so pretty, you know it? My whole life I’ll love looking over at you. I’m so glad to be here right now with you – there’s nowhere else in the whole wide world I’d rather be.”

“You too, Lula, you too...”

November 5

We had quite a day, Lula and me. Slept till 11:30. I was probably up till 3 or 4 a.m. – couldn’t sleep. The mountains majestic – their little snowcap hats – the day crisp, clear. We had coffee and cereal on the roots of an old tree on the rocky shore.

On the way to Milford Sound we stopped at Mirror Lakes and watched the ducks play in the crystal ponds. An upside-down sign could be read in the water I dreamed of swimming in, but Lula said I’d freeze to death and that would be a problem.

We talked about tackling the Milford Track and Lula read up on it – 4 days and 53.5 km or 24.3 miles. The brochure reads, “The Milford Track is something every fit person can do.” Then it says no one under 10 can do it, so you figure, well, a 10-year-old can do it – me too. Then you figure the 1,073 meter (3,433 feet) MacKinnon Pass can be covered in snow any time of year and the track can get 500 mm of rain in 24 hours. We’d have to rent gloves, layers of polypropylene/wool undershirts, overshirts, trousers, and jackets, waterproof raincoats/overtrousers, changes of clothes, sleeping bags, food, and pay for transport across the river and back from Milford Sound, plus accommodation in the huts, and Squatchy $75/day for 4 days while we didn’t even use the poor lonely lad. Lula said she wanted to do it, and I said let’s do a 3-hour hike and then decide.

Routebum Track, New Zealand in thrift store fashion

We hit the trail to Key Summit at about 3 p.m. It follows the Routebum Track for an hour by waterfalls, and vistas of white-peaked Humboldt and Darren Mountains. About 15 minutes into it, Tracey had knives in her stomach from the toasted turkey and cheese sandwich we ate. I waited at a waterfall and ate an orange until she caught up. We agreed to go at our own paces, she’d stop and look at red berries and mushrooms, and I’d race myself up the mountain. The moss hung heavy from the beech trees found in South America and Australia too. After an hour or so with a little finch flying ahead – waiting for us – flying ahead, the track opened to a subalpine field in switchbacks, and I turned and asked as she was tramping – as they said down there – aways back, and huffing, “Do you want to do the Milford Track to prove to yourself that you’re worth something?”

“I don’t want to, but if I did, that would do it.”

We made Key Summit in another 5 minutes, standing in an alpine meadow of peat moss, tarns, bogs, tomtits, robins, and bellbirds, not to mention wood pigeons. The nature trail had wood planks where, sheltered from the wind, enjoying the silence romantically we heard a human cough. As we emerged there ran Wolf with a marshmallow and Joan yelling they were going to stage a photo. Crazy kids. We treaded off for a view of Lake Marian nestled in the care of the Darren Mountains.

“Do you think they were getting it on?” I asked Tracey.

“I don’t know.”

“Wolf could do better.”

“Joan looks like she put her head in the microwave.”

Wolf-Joan came up and said to see Doubtful Sound, cost $1,000 for two, return, but by renting kayaks you could save $500. They yelled and teased each other like teenagers. If we’d been busted making out, at least it would have been them.

I told them I hoped Milford Sound had gas, or we wouldn’t make it back. “We’ll tow you,” Wolf said with infectious German inflections, “for a thousand dollars.”

That’s when it dawned on me. You’re supposed to push back. Say, “No, I’ll shove you in Milford Sound, and you give me a thousand dollars.” That’d probably be the funniest thing Wolf ever heard.

Routebum Track, Milford Sound, New Zealand in the latest thrift store fashion

I wanted to stop every 10 feet to take a picture on the way to Milford Sound, but most of it was avalanche danger no stopping. I guess a moving target is harder to hit. The road to the Sound is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Boulder-bed roaring rivers, sheer black-faced mountainsides, forested mountainsides, snowy mountainsides, mountains above all like a halo and the glow of the setting sun.

Homer Tunnel – dark and dripping with water. I burned the brakes coming down the mountain and tried not to use the brakes or gas – the warning light was on. It looked beautiful and grim.

November 6

Cruise on Milford Sound – granite pushed up by the clash of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate and the Pacific plate – sediment washed away, water washed in.

Tetatakanui Fenoa – demi-god made the 13 fiords – Milford the 13th – as a refuge for coastal travelers, commissioned by the great god Moa, chiseled with a special big ax.

The Elephant and the Lion (Mount Kimberly) on either side of Sterling Falls, dropping from a glacier-carved hanging valley.

Jim, The Narrator, with a stray blue-eye, spotted sea lions for us and six penguins. They came in October to mate and go into the forest, dominated by tree ferns, and nest up to 70 meters deep, under a rock or log. They always have two kids, one lives.

“The other is an insurance policy,” Jim said.

The Maori used to come this way looking for greenstone – a form of jade for ornaments and weapons, a perilous journey down the coast.

A few people stay over in the winter, and Jim said they’re inbred and insane. The first Euro-white settler didn’t see anyone for six years.

Crawfishing and lobstering are the second biggest industry of the area... catching tourists in little clay pots is the first. They go for $15/kilo and most weigh hundreds of kilos, if not thousands.

Milford Sound was Milford Haven in 1806 when the Welsh were the first European folks to sail in. They thought it was a river, but they were wrong. Milford, and the other names around the Sound, are place-names from Wales. 1877-1919 – Donald Sutherland and Elizabeth, 6 months. They wouldn’t see people. Prospectors didn’t find gold, silver, or diamonds, or anything.

Queenstown – They have public toilets here on Public Toilets 100m Road. You push the red button and the door closes by machine. The other red button dispenses two pieces of toilet paper (long ones), if you need it. Don’t press the green button or the door will fly open while you’re sitting there, pants around your ankles, looking for the red button to get two pieces of toilet paper, and then you find the button that sprays the toilet seat with water for sanitary purposes, and you, if you’re in the way, so you’re standing there, wet, with your pants around your ankles, the door flies open, and a pack of Japanese tourists trying to figure out if you’re circumcised or not.

When I was done with my diarrhea, we went out for our very first true Kiwi meal, sushi. The Japanese girl at the Red Snapper brought the California rolls, eel, and shrimp tempura on a wooden ship. Ahoy. The mussels were delicious.

We drove along Lake Wakatipu and it scared me with its darkness. The Remarkables reminded me of The Sawtooths of Idaho which, technically, are The Sawteeth.

Bringing us to, through, and out of Homer Tunnel where we spoke of people who create their own tunnels. They, like everyone can, create their own prisons, and suffer the worse for it.

November 7

Creeksyde Campervan Park

It cost $22 to stay here – more than all our other nights combined. We took a hot tub bath this morning, for $5, and I finally shaved. Tracey’s doing the laundry and I wrote postcards. Tracey told me it’s 4 days till her birthday.

“How old are you going to be?” I asked.

“Shut your mouth,” she said. “Look at the milk, it’s a sign.”

“Pasteurized? Non fat? Two liters net? Refrigerate?”

“No, the expiration date.”

“November 12?”

“November 11.”

“Oh, it’s the eleventh?”

“You know that.”

“I guess you’ll be… 25?”

“Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

“You always give me a hard time.”

“I know, I like to, but I don’t like you to give me a hard time.”

To say I loved her is an understatement, but Lula is making it difficult for me to explore my literary pursuits.

“Good,” she said, “I’m going to muster another toot.”

And oh my gosh, she did.

Lula’s started a lounge act, banging a spoon on the sink, singing like Eddie Rabbitt, a new tune called, “Cooking dinner!”

We left Queenstown as soon as the laundry finished. It’s a rip-off, bungee, 362 feet, jet boats, personal jets you lay down on with a rope and swing around.

We took the road by Cardrona over the range and missed all that overpriced bungee. That made Tracey sad. She loves it. In fact, she invented it, she said, when she was two. She tied rubber bands around her ankles, and jumped off the roof, for attention, but she forgot to tie them to anything, and ironically, it’s what made her a genius.

Another 30 miles of gravel road, fields of sheep. The Remarkables and Eyres, and a cliff I could’ve easily driven over. It was rugged, and a few masochists tried to bike up it.

“That would be my worst nightmare,” Tracey said. “Those idiots.”

Cardrona nestled in a valley, a 1973 Impala for a police car parked forever in front of a vintage post office. Must’ve seen eight people there.

Lake Wanaka, at the base of jagged Mount Aspiring, wind-blown and forlorn. We stopped on the beach and ate lunch.

The bank gave us $350. For the third time. In a week. We were shocked.

Lake Hawea – crystal clear, no, air-clear water by the shore, long, wide, wind, waves, towering mountains all around like old men with snow white hair, a beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, delightful lake. I could live there.

Then you cross over the pass to Lake Wanaka and bang! Nature’s full-on going off with even more and the road hugs the curves on the mountain sides – palms in the foreground the lake stretching far to the south as you can see and the Southern Alps to the West. Stopped often to get out and hug Lula and tell her I loved her long after our space suits rotted, and take it all in. The lake ended sadly on the north side and we passed through Makarora – no sooner had I thought here we are in Makarora then the sign said “Thanks for Coming to Makarora.” I always wonder about Random Victorian Capitalization. The rain finally came on so we stopped at Elk Flats and backed up to the Makarora River, with little waterfalls splashing into it, and curled up, drinking hot tea, playing, pillow fighting, and reading. In the Ya-Ya’s, which Tracey was reading, diamonds and tears, Conner and Siddo got married in Louisiana in October, just as we will. Lula read to me and cried as Sidda and Vivi made up. I could see a lot of her in the book, and some others. Sometimes you need to look from a lot of angles to understand someone. Maybe they’re good-looking, smart, worldly – but numb. You don’t get it. Maybe you learn of abuse, or distance, isolation, growing up in a world they hated. Loss. Chemicals. Pretty soon it’s easier to see how someone can be crazy. As Tracey said, I don’t need to kick anyone in the ass, guilt takes care of that, failure, loss.

“Tragedy is its own reward,” I pointed out.

The rain came down and she made steaks, a first in Squatchy’s frying pan sized kitchen. Oooh, for someone who refuses to cook steaks much, Lula made the best I ever ate. She marinated filet mignon for a day in Worcestershire Sauce, garlic, ranch dressing, lemon and salt. Melt in your mouth, with steamed asparagus, salad with bleu cheese, mashed potatoes and red wine. And the rain came down.

November 8

Since leaving Davis Flats here are some of the creeks we’ve crossed: Roy, Cache, Joe, Dizzy, Dancing, Kiwi, Dismal, Depot, Jamie, Rata, Windbag, Gun Boat, Mai Mai, Stoney...

It was cold in Squatchy when we woke up about 9:30 – real cold. I went to put on the water ‘cause the burners heat up the cabin and the red fridge light was on like every morning, meaning the auxiliary battery was dead and I needed to start the engine to run it off the main battery. The first thing I noticed wrong was the lights were on, but they weren’t on. The engine didn’t even click. I gave it gas and nothing, nothing but a squeak. I cursed and Lula reminded me we hadn’t had one problem at all – this was the first and not a big deal. The rain fell lightly – it hadn’t stopped since 5:30 the previous afternoon. I fixed two cups of tea and dressed warmly and left. I walked along the Makarora River to the far side of the Flats – to another camper. They were a German couple but didn’t have jumper cables. I went to the road. The first car I waved to waved back at me as if I were the welcoming committee. The second stopped. They were a Kiwi family of four that had brought the wrong car – the other one had cables. I waited a long time for the third. I modified my approach. I held up both hands and approached the direction of the oncoming car in a friendly manner and waved with one hand like greeting an old friend and the third car’s speed increased the nearer it got to me. I felt like a mass murderer. They probably wear second-hand khakis, brown boots and navy windbreakers with a baseball cap to top it off. The fourth car had an American couple going north – they didn’t have any – and drove off, stopped, reversed, but said they’d send someone, but said they’d send someone at the next town. We looked at the map while I waited for someone to rear-end them, but there wasn’t one for miles and miles. Another car of two older parents and their young daughter – Americans – stopped but didn’t have cables. They had bottle openers and potty toddy tablets. They said they’d send someone from Makaroara – 20 minutes down the line. The fifth car had a friendly young German couple but they didn’t cables. The sixth car nearly ran over me. I threw rocks at the Davis Flats sign waiting for the seventh, but the old Kiwi couple didn’t have cables.

“Somebody will,” I said, so they wouldn’t feel sorry for me.

“Good on you,” the old fellow said.

The eighth car wouldn’t have cared if my pregnant wife was screaming bloody murder in the throws of delivering twins. The ninth slowed. A young Kiwi in a white mini open-bed pick-up. He had a buzz cut.

“Hop on,” he said.

I jumped on the open back and held onto the cab as he hauled out over the Flats to Squatchy.

“This is Tracey, my fiancé.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Shane.”

He and I pushed it as she tried to pop it into second. No luck.

“I’ve got a tow rope,” he said, and went to dig through several boxes he had piled in the passenger seat.

“You moving?” I asked.

“Just collecting a few things. I was engaged – but we broke it off.” I was glad I hadn’t gone on and on about it. Instead of a ring she got magic marker and this trip.

“What happened?”

“Her parents got involved.”

“What did they have to do with it?”

“I don’t really understand it myself. It started three years ago. We bought a car together, without asking them.”

“And that was enough?”

“Yes.”

He attached the rope to our cars and I climbed in to drive – he pulled up to the road and once we got to speed I tried to start it – Squatchy bucked, and nothing. He said to drive his and he climbed in Squatchy with Trace. I pulled away. He had a few garish shirts and ties on a hanger getting crumpled. Bits of trash on the floor. Bat Out of Hell CD on the dashboard. A CD player rigged. Broken-hearted fellow couldn’t get it started.

He couldn’t jumpstart it either and we wound up where we started.

“I’ve got some cables,” he said, and I wondered why he didn’t say in the first place. “I’ve got three batteries on my truck... bit of mechanical work I did up in Nelson. He fished through a box of belongings.

“Where ya headin’?”

“I’ve got some land down in Queenstown. Been there?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of it?”

“Lot of t-shirts.”

“You either love it or hate it,” he said.

“We bought t-shirts,” Tracey said.

“No,” I said, “we liked it, we’ve just been in Nature this whole trip and we pull into there and there’s a KFC, you know?”

He lifted the bed of the flatbed to connect the cables. I pushed my driver’s seat forward and he connected the cables. It fired right up. I was already feeling better about the KFC.

“There you are mate.”

“Thanks, thanks a lot, er, what’s your name?”

“Shane.”

“How about a cup of coffee Shane?”

“Love one.”

Trace fired up the kettle and I pulled out the table and put away the love nest. He explained how he’d worked as a guide in the caves where the moa bones grew up to eight feet in length. They’re extinct but the Maori used to eat them.

“Sounds like 1+1 = 2. How are the Maori?”

“They just got a $280 million settlement. It’s supposed to be the last, but it doesn’t help everyone.”

He explained he’s not racist at all – if they don’t take chances they’re maybe like American Indians – retribution is grudgingly granted – cowboys and Indians. His father was part Aboriginal and he had Maori friends, but the system was too fair – the council elders got the money and they put it into various programs. Individuals didn’t receive money, and you weren’t likely to if you didn’t go to the Maori church or live within the inner circle, and certainly not if you were a half-caste. They’d just have to wait and see.

“I want to come to the States and see Indians,” he said, “with my newfound freedom. See if the culture still exists. A friend of his slept in a teepee once – he wanted to. I told him about the Navajo and the Hopi. I wrote down places for him to see in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala too, and our address. He needed a new beginning. He looked about 30 and he had more freedom than he knew what to do with.

“You may see me in a few years,” he said. Never did.

We crossed Heart Pass – a rainforest in the rain – a waterfall in every crevice. It sleeted, pelting the road, and snowed in sheets in the broad valley the river made its way through in a rocky bed of smooth, rounded gray stones. Creek after creek.

Lake Mathieson Café

“It’s weird,” Tracey said, “It’s weird.”

“What is?”

She was nearly in tears,

“That my close friend, that I can see so clearly, is dead. Buried. And all the people her life touched. And she’s not in her body any more.”

The Southern Alps behind her – a crystal clear day. She’d just wrote a song for Jennifer.

We got our first view of Mount Cook – the tallest in New Zealand, but it didn’t look any taller than anything else.

You lose all perspective in this kind of paradise, and you don’t want it back. I made chilidogs with onions and cheese parked on a coastal cliff. The rain came in, sleet too. In the insane hail, New Zealand, I’ve still never seen as beautiful a country as you.

“Waaaaaaa!” I screamed. Bruce Lee Kung Fu Fighting is playing on the radio, Lula sighting a waterfall in a gorge above a river with a creek flowing into it. I sing I love Lula to the tune of Born Free. It’s Actually A Big World to tune of It’s a Small World. Lula to the tune of Lola. I sing all the time. It’s a wonder I never hit a note.

We pulled into Fox Glacier Township about 5:30. It was a dark, dark world after all, so we headed out to Gillespie Beach on a gravel road through the bush. What a bush. Tree ferns dripping with condensation, black streams, palms, every shade of emerald.

We came out onto a little campground and two girls in a campervan said the beach was 10 minutes away so we went back, took a left at the fork, past the Hot Box, named after Lula, I jestered, onto a wide gray beach covered with driftwood. The waves a cacophony. Ba-booms like a chorus of big bass drums. I checked it out and drove out onto the beach staying on the rocks, not venturing into the sand, and backed it so the surf painted the picture out our back window we liked where all you could see was beach and ocean. We took a walk and drank a beer and hugged and found stones. The two girls drove up in their dingy old red-striped campervan and asked about the beach. I’d stay on the rocks, I said. They drove about 40 yards past us, looked around from the cat-bird seat, and initiated a 16-point turn. I told Lula, I hope they don’t get stuck. I’m the one who’ll have to get them out. They got stuck.

“Are you going over there?” Lula asked.

“Yes.”

“Stop, stop,” I said as she spun it in deeper.

That’s how I met two Lucys from London, digging themselves a deeper hole.

I used driftwood to dig under the back left tire and wedged it in. By all accounts it was the thing to do and should have worked but the tire burned on the soggy wood. I dug more with a dustpan, built a ramp of sticks, stones, and tried wrapping a log in snow chains. The tire spun and smoked, everything was wet, it rained, and after an hour, sleeted. The sun was setting. They borrowed a tow rope and we hooked it to Squatchy, but he couldn’t budge it and nearly sank himself. I couldn’t do anything and felt bad about it. Shane had helped us and I wanted to help them. The sand turned to mud and they were deeper than ever. Lucy Deuce decided to spend the night, next to the Caution: Soft Sand sign. At least you’ve got a great view. It wasn’t that funny to her.

We ate angel hair and sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts and drank almost a bottle of red wine. I was so buzzed after a glass I stared at Lula cooking for 15 minutes. I slept like a rock.

NZ jason walking on beach wide shot 2.jpg

November 9

The morning cracked with clarity. No sooner had I fixed a cup of coffee and reached Mark’s perch with a spectacular view of the beach and ocean, then three guys pulled up in an AWD.

“You stuck?” they asked.

“No. But two girls are.”

“They need help?”

“I bet they’d love it. I’ll go knock on the door.”

I woke up Lucy – they weren’t as early risers as they said.

“The cavalry is here.”

The lads pulled out a tow rope like the one we’d destroyed the before the girls had borrowed from the farmers who had the schizophrenic, braying, donkey. They dug with the dust pan.

The Lucys made tea. The boys went to Otago U in Dunedin, studied Finance and Law. The lawyer kicked a hacky-sack around. The driver had a MacAbeer Beer shirt on – the beer of Israel. A Jew in New Zealand. Why not? I talked to the Financier. They’d just finished exams for their second year. On the drive down they slept two hours in the car on top of suitcases, guitars, and general crap before getting in at 7 a.m. to watch the All Blacks play rugby in a pub in town. A few of the locals were drunks, the Barrister said, “so I razzed ‘em about drinking.” He was glad to be sober right now, he was sick of drinking. Then he went back and borrowed a shovel from the farmers or shepherds. The other two hooked up the tow rope and dug the car in worse. Then waited for the shovel. They were taking 3 or 4 days before heading back to Wellington – to land student jobs – easy stuff. And their prospects after graduation?

Pretty good – they seemed hopeful, well-dressed, mannered, clean cut, clean before digging. A lot went to Oz, marketers, but most would find work. Unemployment? Nine percent. Urban? Rural. Farm services, decline of agriculture. Incline of environmentalism. I asked them how many sheep would poison the country? Twenty million didn’t do it. Maybe good fertilizer. Four million people in New Zealand, one-fifth the population of sheep. You don’t see many people here. They drove 7 hours and passed 8 cars.

Lawyer came back and they took turns digging. Driver got in Lucy’s car to tow. Financier drove the AWD – rocking forward – backward – the Lucys pushed, Lawyer pushed, and I took a picture as the tow rope snapped with the Soft Sand sign in the background. But the camper finally spun out of the holes, and we stood around gaping at the trenches like the first people to see The Grand Canyon.

Car trouble is a great way to meet people. No sooner had I said that then the boys were driving away.

“Where are they going?” Lucy asked.

“Don’t know what they’re missing, do they?”

“No,” the other Lucy said, “We could’ve cooked them dinner, and we have a bottle of wine.”

“Maybe they realized it,” I said as they turned around on the beach and came back and said goodbye as they drove past us.

“No,” Lucy said. The girls looked glum.

We gave ‘em our address in L.A. They’d be there the first week of December, the only week we’d be there in December. We never saw them. We had breakfast at the Mathieson Lake Café, but missed the lake, then hurried to Alpine Guides. We’d arranged a noon helihike. High noon. The clear day turned to clouds. We put on wool socks and hobnail boots and eight of us rode in a van with Hillary our guide to the helipad. Then she told us we couldn’t go and drove us back to the shop and said to come back at two.

Lula and I made out in the parking lot. The Sweet Little Death, as my French friend Xavier liked so much to say. At two Hillary knocked on the pilot’s door. No go. I’d been to the shop bathroom and read all the graffiti and one guy wrote, “Two days of rain in Fox and no helihike. The best thing I had was this shit.” We decided to take a refund.

It was two days until Lula’s birthday and I had no idea what to do for her. I didn’t even know where we’d be.

We drove out to Fox Glacier in case it cleared long enough to see. It was dumping blankets of water from angry low clouds. This upset me so I went to sleep.

When we awoke, about 6, it was crapping bed sheets of water from cross near clouds, and the sun had been obliterated by an astounding feat of stinginess on the part of Mother Nature.

Lula went stir crazy and started jumping around the cabin singing songs out of tune. Her eyes looked like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining. She had to get out of Squatchy or we both might perish.

“Let’s go to a B&B,” she said, “I’ll pay.”

That’s all I needed to hear. We went to six motels, non as satisfactory as Squatchy, for $70. And it’s extra for the hot tub you can’t sit in if you’re not a guest. We drove out of town, her sanity further compromised by rollercoaster sugar levels induced by starvation. I drove to “Pizza.” It turned out to be a trendy café with baroque flower paintings, jazz, Bohemian wait staff with earrings and pigtails, and travelers in black turtlenecks, and shrimp, avocado, and mussel pizza on the menu which, as it turned out, we ordered, and ate.

“How’s it going, team?” the waiter asked.

“The pizza won.”

It was big as the Rose Bowl.

“Isn’t that your appetizer?” he asked.

“Get stuffed, sod off, and bring us our check, ragamuffin.”

Slaughter complete, we drove out of town on an unlit gravel road in the deepest bush where frogs chortled and ax murderers lay in swampy wait.

Fox Glacier from the helicopter, New Zealand

November 10

The Sweet Baby Jesus wasn’t ready for us, not prepared, and we awoke to a day clearer than a sunny day with glacial-encrusted, fresh-packed montañas. Birds sang and ducks howled and snow swept in misty wisps off the highest peaks.

1:30 p.m. The helicopter is the most perfect machine ever. I want to be a pilot. He did circles above the blue ice fairyland, high up on Franz Josef Glacier, confusing the body’s perception of gravity. Then he landed on a bump, nothing more. The Japanese woman had gasped at every turn. We joined an Ozzie couple from Brisbane, Tammy and Thomas, and a Korean couple. The woman couldn’t keep her hobnailed feet under her which meant her pick ax was afoot.

“We’re going to get an extra long trip,” I said, as she slid precipitously close to a precipice.

“That’s a 140 meters deep,” Jamie our Scottish guide said. “My rope’s only 50 meters long. You don’t want to fall in there.”

But I don’t think she understood by the way she kept falling down.

“Are there yeti?” I asked.

“No, ‘fraid not.”

“Bigfeet?”

“Not really.”

“Sasquatch?”

“Nope.”

“Shame, I wanted to kill one, with my ice ax.”

“Or,” Lula said, “Keep it and put clothes on it and take it home and charge people $5 to see it.”

“We could charge $19.95 for the buffet,” I said, “and have Sasquatch clean their tables.”

“There are goats on the mountains either side of the glacier,” Jamie said, “but no yeti.”

It had snowed eight inches and he had to find the trail – through caves, down slides, on ice walls where he had to carve steps. Pinnacles and fissures, flowing streams, blue ice, ice castles with the fantasy formations, ice trolls, famous faces, goblin cottages, marshmallow fields. The bluest sky. Never seen anything like it. One slide was about 20 feet high. Lula and I had a grand old time. We tended to stray behind, which was hard to do with the lady falling all over the place. Once Jamie caught us making out, and he gave us the thumbs up. After three hours, we’d made a huge circle and Jamie, Tammy and I had a huge snowball fight. For the flight down, the pilot thrust us right up beside the mountain close enough to kiss whooshed us into nothingness and banked a steep left. We left gravity for an instant, long enough for me to plot how to become a helicopter pilot.

Now that my paper supply is limited to half a page, and I have to tell of the antique store in Greymouth, the road to Westport, the Scoundrel of Westport, Obtaining a Birthday Fruitcake, Blowholes, and Nearly Kidnapped in Parahoa, The Great Fried Chicken Massacre, The Greater Mac and Cheese Fiasco, and The Greatest Caravan Park in the World, Lula’s Greatest Birthday Ever, including Balloons, Candles, Champagne, Showers, The Card That Promised Everything, Gallivanting with Doc the Maori who hates “poofters” & Rat, Eleven-Month Old Giantess, The Road to Nelson, Richard’s Te Puna Wai Lodge on Richardson (“an elegant early Victorian villa, once home of noted New Zealand photographer William Tyree, is set on the significant Port Hills, commanding unsurpassed sea and mountain views.

Te Puna Wai Lodge, Nelson, New Zealand tepunawai.co.nz

The house provides sunny verandas ((which I’m in a hammock on listening to Leonard Cohen and petting a chocolate cat with emerald waters, islands, distant snow-covered mountains, birds chirping)), Tracey’s Crayfish Birthday Dinner As If on Acid at the Old Harbor Store Rest, The Dizzy Walk Home, The Wild Romp When She Came Down Some, The World’s Greatest Breakfast with Cheesecake, World’s Worst Bumper Sticker, and The Spot On Imitation of Lula, by Lula (“Champagne? Cake? Lobster?! Well I never!”).

I was so annoyed and she said I was so sweet. And now I want to write a novel, and you can’t do it without paper.

November 10 (More Paper)

The Antiquarian of Greymouth

Pleasantly strolling amongst blue bottles, steins, wind-up dolls, ceramic bowls with pears and doves, the news rang out of a find old brass radio in the musty antique store. Lula and I were admiring salt and pepper shakers when the proprietor, a fellow staining a dresser in the back amidst early maps of East Africa and the first picture books of New Zealand, called out, “If Jamie Taylor wants to cut the logging let her come down here to the West Coast and have a word with me! I’ll tell her about my mate with two kids who’ll have to go on the dole or back to the city if she gets her way!”

I smiled sheepishly, holding antithetical beliefs including the one that his mate should go wherever else he needs to if it’ll save a few trees, and Lula looked at lace placemats ignoring him quite purposefully.

“I’ll drive those goddamn yuppies back to Christchurch myself if they come down here to the West Coast! Let them come down here and see how it is!” First he didn’t want them to come, now he did. “All that environmentalism! New Zealand needs industry. Up there in Christchurch, Wellington, those dirty politicians don’t know a thing about it what goes on around the rest of the country.”

Nobody threw anything away in New Zealand. It came too far from England to dispense with, and it all seemed to land in the hands of men who made them trade on antiquarian ideas. As we left, he shouted, “Let them come down here just once, I’ll send them back under the rock they came out of!”

The Scoundrel of Westport

We get into Westport around dark, that is to say about 8:30. In New Zealand, everything closes at 5, including petrol stations. As usual, I pull into town on E, a little game I like to play with myself, and sometimes innocents. The Gas Game, I call it. But they have credit card machines you can use anytime. But they won’t work, not even on the shady side of Westport – the last station we had a glimmer of hope for before spending the night at the pump. I’d heard Westport had gone bust after the coal ran dry, and it looks a little like communism. Hell, the lovely Cape Ferdinand is only a few miles upwind.

There’s a grubby fellow in a wife beater filling a gas can.

“How’re you going?” he asked, so I figured he wouldn’t mug me, which I doubted anyway. All Kiwis are friendly.

“Um, okay,” I said, “but I was wondering if you could charge some gas for me and let me pay you cash for it? I wouldn’t ask but we won’t get far without it.”

“Uh, er, alright.”

I counted out $35 and said, “Here’s 35.”

He punched it in and I went to the car and started to pump. He got in his car and I thanked him as he pulled away. I pumped it, but it stopped at $30. He pulled back in to get the receipt. I walked over to him and said, “It stopped at 30.”

“You want your 5 bucks back?”

“Yes, please.”

“I thought it was for goodwill.”

I took it and smiled and walked off. Not a lot of coal left in those parts.

Obtaining a Birthday Fruitcake & Blowholes & Pancake Rocks

Parahao National Park looked like the coast of California only at least twice better by far, some. To get out of the van and as a last ditch effort to get a birthday cake for Lula, I ran into a café as she read dolphin flyers. They had citrus cakes and tarts and all manner of sugarfied squares.

“Have you got something that could pass for a birthday cake?”

“Hold on,” she said and disappeared into the back of her crowded little shop. I looked back, no Lula, perfect. She brought out a little brown square box of a cake.

“Perfect,” I said, whatever it was.

She cut it in half and said, “That’s 12 dollars,” as millions of raisins spilled out of the fruitcake.

Okay, I thought, that’ll do – a birthday fruitcake. It was the sort of thing I used to do in college, and the teacher knew I didn’t do my homework (I should’ve lied like everybody else but it was nickel beer night and sometimes they understood that.) She wrapped it up and I emerged on the street. No Lula. I put it in Squatchy. No Lula. I ran to the toilet.

“Trace?”

No Lula. I ran to the trail.

“Did you see a girl in a red jacket?”

“No,” a German said.

Fine for you, I thought, your fiancé hasn’t been kidnapped and taken away and you’re scared to death and have to find police and drive and drive to find her and they’re never alive when you do oh God Lula. I ran down the trail then heard, “Jason!” There she was.

“Where the hell were you?”

She was confused, angry. I’d never disappear on her – where was I?

“The coffee took forever.”

Then we admired the blowholes. The water rushed into caves that concentrated their force and blew it up out of a hole 20-feet high. The mist drifted off on the breeze. The pancake rocks were flat.

The Great Fried Chicken Massacre and The Greater Mac and Cheese Fiasco at The Greatest Caravan Park in the World

Well, yes, just that.

November 11

She awoke and I sang happy birthday like Marilyn Monroe. That was enough to make it her greatest birthday ever. There was more anyway, but she wouldn’t leave to shower so I could set up. She read and read.

“Let’s shower,” she said, after an hour. I’d already snuck off and set up the horseback ride.

“No,” I said, “I’m going to straighten up, you go ahead.”

She looked at me like I’d turned into a cigar-smoking donkey in a tutu. Finally, she went, and I set to work. I cleaned Squatchy, blew up a dozen colored balloons and hung ‘em all over the place, and wrote I Heart U with candles in the birthday fruitcake, wrote everything under the sun that she could have, and broke out the champagne. Then I read ten chapters in my book and she came back after an hour. I had the curtains drawn and the door locked.

“Who is it?”

“Tracey!”

“Tracey who?”

“Tracey birthday girl!”

“Never heard of her!”

I put her off while I lit all those candles.

“C’mon!” she said.

It took forever. Finally, I let her in. “Surprise!”

Her mouth dropped open and her tongue rolled like a red carpet on the floor. She was so happy to get a birthday fruitcake she threw to the birds, and the champagne gave her a headache long into the night. It was the greatest birthday ever.

Doc & Rat, The Eleven-Month Old Giantess

Tracey’s “One Big Surprise,” as promised in her birthday card, was rafting, I lied.

“I hate rafting.”

“No, it’s spelunking in the Honeycomb Caves of Karanea,” but that sounded like a fart to her, and there were already plenty of those to go around.

We pulled up to Buller Adventures and she saw the horses.

“What are we doing here?”

“Whitewater rafting.”

A man with a thin goatee walked up and asked, “So you here for the riding?”

“The rafting.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“I’m too smart,” Tracey said, “I knew anyway.”

His name was Doc, he said.

“Are you a doctor?”

“Dockerty, my last name.”

“There’s a Dockerty Creek,” I told him.

“Go figure.”

He saddled up the horses, Lady was Lula’s, I was on Patrick, and Sandy for Doc.

He said Rata loved to go for a run with the horses. She was full grown at 11 months -- enormous with a big slobbery head. Part Rottweiler and a lover girl, she’d been owned by a 14-stone lady who named her Candy. Maybe she planned to eat her. Lady tried to bite her, Sandy, and Lula. Some lady.

“That’s a rata tree there,” Doc said. “Its seed flies into another tree. The roots shoot down, the limbs shoot up, and it kills its host. There’s one growing on a rimu tree, one of the hardest woods there is. That’s a tree palm – there’s over 200 species of those.”

“Do you live there?” Lula asked.

“With my boyfriend,” he said, waiting for a reaction. I thought he was effeminate, or gentle.

He laughed. “No, I don’t understand pooftahs – lesbos yeah – not pooftahs. I just don’t see it. Trendy over in Oz.”

It was a long strange ride but Lula got to gallop with her hair blowing in the wind when Lady wasn’t biting us.

Te Puna Wai & Pushkin Pom Pom

Tracey found The Lodge listed in the accommodation guide and called Richard who said he did have a room. The winding Buller River and flotilla escorted us up to Nelson on a glorious afternoon in three hours, along the bay front, up a steep hill, #24 Richardson, Old Glory flying. A yellow Victorian, roses in the garden, porches on the first two floors, a corrugated tin roof capping the third – a “commanding view,” “arresting.”

Richard had a lazy eye, short hair, thin, in his forties, intelligibly gay, and immediately likeable, instantly someone you’d trust. His poodle Cocoa didn’t know she was a poodle or even a dog. A cat, Pushkin, was a sleek, creamy, talkative lover lion. He curled up in the crook of my arm on the big bed, and another chococat curled up beside me, equally amiable and happy.

“I knew you were cool,” Tracey told Richard. “You can’t have pets like that and not be cool.”

“It’s true,” he said, “Pets are a reflection of their owner.”

Hardwood floors, elegance, with a lighthouse view of Tasman Bay, Abel Tasman National Park, and beyond glistening Golden Bay or as Dutchman Abel Tasman, of National Park, dubbed it, Massacre Bay or Murderers’ Bay depending on your dictionary, because of Abel Tasman, of National Park, the same who finagled credit out of everyone on two whole enormous ships for first European contact in 1642 CE with the Maori, one of two native peoples in the world never conquered, Abel who, remember, boldly sent his men out in a rowboat to get hacked to bits.

“Bubbles? Cheesecake?” Richard asked. The cake I’d paid as a penance for ahead of time to make up for The Worst Birthday Fruitcake Blob in Recorded History CE was on the table, pre-cut, with strawberries, Deloise.

“Not now, thanks,” Tracey said. She still had a headache from the morning’s champagne. She needed food.

“You have reservations at the Harbor Light Store down the hill,” Richard said. He’d taken care of everything. “The cheesecake will be in the fridge when you come home.”

We had a window seat over the water, candlelit. “I feel like I’m on acid,” Lula said.

“When you’re peaking, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

She got through the mushroom appetizers then said, “I feel, feel, like I need to lay down.” She put her head on the table. “Is it hot in here?”

The crayfish came – much like lobster and just as expensive.

“I can’t eat it. I’m going to use the bathroom. Okay?”

“Sure,” I said, and tucked in. Succulent buttery crayfish, haute cuisine. She came back. “Do you need to go?”

“Yes.”

We paid $100 and took the rest to go. Halfway up the hill she laid down on a driveway. “This is better,” she said, “Cold.”

We got home and I laid her in bed. She came down some. Then we had wild sleep.

November 12

“You dosed her,” I told Richard the next morning.

“Did I give her too much?”

“She’s very sensitive.”

She appeared having awoken like The Mummy. Richard had a bumper sticker that said, “Poodle on Board.” We wanted one for Squatchy. Only better still, for its audacity, “Feed the Animals, With Litter.” For breakfast we had fresh rolls, orange marmalade, blackberry jam, poached eggs, Italian coffee, cheesecake with strawberries, yoghurt, cereal, fruit, Camembert cheese, and champagne. Royalty. Lula made fun of herself at breakfast nearly making coffee come out of my nostril. “Champagne? Cheesecake? No! I want dinner! Crayfish? Lobster? No! I can’t eat that! It makes me sick! Get me out of here!”

Stefan the Pole

Stefan lived with Richard, in what capacity we were never sure. Eighteen months he’d been there.

“It was my dream,” he told me as he helped me fix tea, having hung our laundry, “since I was six years old to go to New Zealand.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Pictures. I worked for a very long time to come here. And it was not possible for a long time.”

“What was communism like?”

“A lot of people ask me that. I don’t know what to say, but I tell them, it’s like a rainy day when people pull up their collars and walk past you and don’t look up, all the time. People were killed, many people. But I had a good childhood too. It wasn’t all bad. Lots of friends. Throwing gas bombs as a teenager, not political, all my friends were doing it. And my family was very close.”

“How’d you get here?”

“I was in the army for 18 months, the most miserable time of my life.” He drank a gulp of his red wine, his long limbs stretched out over the kitchen counter. “I got out and said I was leaving and never going back. I borrowed $100 and went to Finland. Then Germany and Paris. Big cities always, I hate them. I saved the money and came to New Zealand – Auckland. I was very let down. It was what I tried to leave. I spent three months on the North Island as a tourist, and they extended my Visa because I took English lessons. I gave up, bought my ticket for home, and then Richard phoned. We have a very good mutual friend in Germany. He spends six months of the year there, and he said, ‘You were supposed to come visit me, what happened?’ I told him I was to leave but he said to come down, just take a look. I came down for one day, with a ticket to go back the next day, and I’ve stayed a year and a half. He said he’d help with my Visa, and he has.”

“What do you do?”

“Paint.”

“Houses?”

“Yes. I hate it. I’m an electrician by trade. But I love it here. Really. It’s what I always wanted.”

“Do you hear from home?”

“From my sister – it’s bad – the rich point the finger at the poor – very bad state of affairs.”

Lula on Brent's boat, Abel Tasmin National Park, New Zealand

November 13

Cheating on the Abel Tasman Track and the Awaroa Lodge & Café

The idea, as Stefan conceived it and Richard executed it, was to cheat. To drive from Nelson to Marahau, catch up with Rod Stewart the Boatman at Seafari’s and get an aquataxi over to Bark Bay, hike three hours of the 3-day Abel Tasman Track, and stay at the Awaroa Lodge.

The road to Marahau was so curvy the fridge door flew open spilling its contents. We arrived and Brent, not Rod, told us it was the time they normally left. But if we don’t eat lunch Tracey’s sugar levels would soar and that’d be very bad. He said somebody would take us down to the beach and I ate Lula’s crayfish.

Using colors to describe the ocean and coastline of the north shore of the South Island would be insulting. The waters are Caribbean, Mediterranean, Great Barrier Reefean. The coastline is Hawaiian, but there is little flora in New Zealand that’s ever exactly equivalent to North America or the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps anywhere. The ferns are a little different, the palms are, it’s rugged and lush and emerald in familiar and foreign ways. The sand is the same. Pristine, rich, deep powder. The Monterey Pine might be the same too.

Brent left us on Bark Bay – a golden crescent in love with the ocean. We hugged and celebrated and kicked off our shoes and traversed the beach and stream and put our shoes on, and took them off to cross streams of absolute clarity and put them on to climb steep granite and marble cliffs.

NZ abel tasmin thru trees gorgeous smaller.jpg

NZ Abel Tasmin trek beach thru trees 2.jpg

Switch backs wound up and down and around beech and boulder, sun and shade, sand and thick woods I’d call a cross between forest and jungle, rich green deep down, up to a plateau, a pine tree forest humming with bees, but not like Georgia pine trees or even bees. After an hour the famed Track emerged onto Tonga Bay and we had lunch, kiwi fruit, raisins, an orange, and found a sandy patch up in the rocks and made wholly unsacrosanct sex under an immense totara tree, holy to the Maori, or holey after they carved canoes out of ‘em to butcher people and stuff right where we weren’t looking. Beautiful girl, wonderful world. We crossed a long swath of immaculate austerity, Onetahuti Beach, at low tide – otherwise untraversible – paradise, timing/perfect – and after another hour where we couldn’t look in any direction without being smacked in the face by beauty or muffle our ears to birdsong – about three hours total – we arrived.

Awaroa Lodge, Abel Tasmin National Park, New Zealand

In sync with its surroundings, the eco-resort Awaroa Lodge and Café was somewhat hard to spot at first, camouflaged in native colors a few hundred feet off the beach for minimal impact. Once we caught sight of it, it was love at first sight. Crossing the lawn to the Lodge was a process of discovery as more bungalows, winding paths, and 4-star architectural touches like driftwood art revealed itself. It was almost too wonderful for words.

Inside the Lodge – with a fireplace – we were greeted by paintings of “The Swedish Girls,” “Paradise,” a nude called “Mum and Dad on the Beach,” and “Girls on the Beach,” with pronounced breasts complete with nipples. Greg, a friendly young guy, brought us seafood fettuccini with salmon, mussels and shrimp, a pint of Moi’s Gold for me and local Pinot Noir for The Lula. We settled in for a game of Scrabble in the luxuriously appointed The Library and then a fierce round of cuddling in our dream bungalow as a nearly full moon flowed electrically.

Maori Cove Abel Tasmin National Park, New Zealand

November 14

After a great breakfast, it was too soon to leave, but au revoir at those rates, boats, B&B’s, helihikes, halfway through a seven-country Circle Pacific Odyssey… Kelvin picked us up at the beach. Along the coast we saw seals – one with a big hole from fighting.

“Same old story,” Kelvin said, “Women. If you look at ‘em, they all look the same. Big inbred bastards. Big boys always win,” he said glumly. I was sweating bullets, wondering how long this wondrous adventure must be endured. “Nature,” the man practically named after science said, “ensures that so that they survive the harsh climates.”

“We don’t do that anymore,” I said. “Anyone can breed nowadays.”

“Yes,” he said, “if you think about it,” notice how he bypasses breeding altogether here, “everything has a purpose. Some birds are shaped like a torpedo. They dive straight down. Others swim real well. They have webbed feet. Others don’t fly at all. Don’t need to. No predators. Which would date Gondwanaland to the Jurassic Period – no mammals.” Kelvin murdered me in the first degree. That Kelvin.

“How long have the Maori been here?”

“Speculation. Some say as late as the 14th to 16th century, AD.”

I’d read earlier. You gonna argue with Gondwanaland?

As our timing was always perfect and we were never late, Kelvin showed us a lagoon on the east side of Tonga Island you could only get to at high tide – slipping through a narrow cut made narrower by a rock in the middle.

“Put your signature on that,” Kelvin said, as we swept close enough by to do so. “Maori slung nets across the entrance at high tide, low tide, lots of fish. See that? The waterslide. A canoe groove. The middens have been excavated.”

It was as beautiful a secret gem as I’d ever been privy to, including cenotés, opulent waters, sandy bottom, kind of place that makes you want to stay forever.

“You can only get in here about an hour either side of high tide. Sea kayakers often miss it.”

Next he showed us Tonga Caves which were smallish, immaculate, carved into soft granite of fairly recent origin – only 170 million years BCE.

“And you think,” Kelvin said, “ours is only one planet and they say the same chemicals exist on the others in our solar system and the sun. Not a far cry to imagine the others having the condition to sustain life.”

“Someone on a distant planet,” I said, “is riding around on an oxygen ocean (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) in a liquid boat having the same conversation about us.”

The boat bounced along on the calm ocean, sending out ripples to the horizon, the sky clear enough to break with a sling shot.

“I’m amazed there’s no poisonous spiders or snakes here,” I said.

“Only one, a spider, but it won’t kill you, maybe a child, but I don’t think anyone’s ever died from it.”

The purpose of all things led us to a debate on design, under consideration of the mighty pine that was made to hold moisture but dies if it finds itself in a swamp unless it survives by transformation. The intricacy by which it survives, to Kelvin’s mind, pointed to a designer.

“The fact that a tree exists at all seems to be the question,” I said, “intricacy in and of itself doesn’t necessitate a creator.”

I studied the broken vessels on his face, his gray moustache, while he thought that one over. “Yes,” he said finally, “why is there life at all? What’s the purpose?”

That afternoon, quite tired, we drove to Kaikoura on the east side of the South Island, ate chili dogs, saw Father’s Day, and made sweet sweet love. That is the purpose, and why there’s life, Kelvin.

November 15

Lula arranged everything as I had coffee, shaking off a shaky night’s sleep next to the bowling green. It’s 6:15 p.m., I’m sitting in my camp chair in a wind from the southeast on a chalky point with vertical pancakes, water 300 degrees, snowy mountains to my right, hazy ones straight ahead, boats coming in, and the end of the peninsula where a seal colony lives and barks to death like inmates in a dog pound.

I had a CB Vita-Stout and loved it but knocked it over. Then I finished a Steam Beer, and somehow polished off Marlborough Brewing Company’s Somethingorother, which took top honors from all the judges present who awarded extra points for the low, low price of $2.60 for a nice big bottle. So far today we’ve seen sperm whales by plane, scuba dived with octopi, and snorkeled with seals. Now I’ve got a Canterbury Draught. I like it better than the Steam, but not as much as the Vita-Stout which had vitamins. It’s as beautiful here as the world gets, as beauty can provide.

Hanish was our pilot – a young guy – curly brown hair – very polite – he said he was a builder to afford his pilot’s license – about $65,000 – and the NZAF you can’t get in – it’s too small. Lula sat in the front seat and I in the back and the whole little thing shook and took off on a nickel. We climbed to 10,000 feet, roughly equilateral to Mount Tapuae-o-Uenuku – some say its name means “footprint of the rainbow” but they’re stupid dreamers, it means “the sacred steps of Uenuku.” Ask a Maori. It’s an intimidating jagged spire that Hillary soloed in ’44 then headed out to kill him some Nazis or Nippon, as they used to say I didn’t make it up or mean anything by it, that’s history folks. Ask a Maori.

We circled and circled. Veered. Circled. Don’t let anyone tell you whale s potting is the same as trainspotting. It’s a queasy weave over a dark vacant ocean. Until I saw a Moby at one o’clock that is. We ran for it and the boats ran for it, poor thing. We circled and circled, pirouetting on a wing. It was about 45-feet long and Hanish said it could dive to 2,500 meters or “7,500 feet,” according to Hanish. a nuclear sub can go to 1000 meters whatever that is. That’s what the Sperms do around these parts, for fun. In their free time. They eat squid up to 60-feet in length which is measurable in meters as well and fishermen sometimes find squid parts floating around which they take home and fry up. The Sperms, called that by me because I love saying it so much, stay down for about 50 minutes, not sure what that is in meters, come up, clear out the ol’ blow hole, breathe for five minutes, and dive again. Hundreds if not meters of whales, dolphins, and seals are all here because the Ring of Fire trench the Maori dubbed “The Kaikoura Trench” or someone else did, rises abruptly and conveniently on the doorstep of Kaikoura, which in Maori means to eat crayfish or crayfish feast (the ancestral Red Lobster) or you’re always welcome to casually drop the full proper name, Te Ahi-kai-koura-a-Tamatea-pokai-whenua, flounce the rest of these bastards or the fire that Tamatea-pokai-whenua made to cook crayfish and fleece tourists, depending on which iwi you ask. Sperms are big though, I’d get pretty mad too if I had to catch one in a longboat or even a short one.

Our dive master Dale of South Africa caught a crayfish. They don’t fight like lobster and can’t hurt you, but they’re fast and live under rocks, very hard to catch by a disoriented, cold novice. When I jumped in I thought, “Fuck!” Lula couldn’t move her legs. She told me she felt like an elephant in a wetsuit trying to swim in peanut butter. As soon as she got in she couldn’t wait for it to be over and counted the seconds till it was. I was okay once I got over the freezing and the 10-foot surge, which was chaotic and called forth imminent destruction in the kelp trenches, or rocked a lullaby if you enjoyed it. You think kelp will try to strangle you as you swim through a trench looking for critters, but it won’t. The net on the other hand, will. Dale stopped me inches short of one. I was trying to figure out if my headache came from my sinus block or the cold. The cold – so it was an okay headache. We had to take off a glove to pet a slimy-skinned baby octopus who sucked on our fingers playfully with its suction cups, worth every inch of frost bite. A seal swam up and peered in Lula’s mask – curious – and swam off. I peed in my wetsuit and it warmed me all over. We swam to within feet of the seals and they loved us. We saw their penises. I think all but mine are gross, mine’s great.

November 17

We left Kaikoura after an aborted attempt to swim with dolphins. It sucked shit. I knew there’d be trouble when I had to get Lula up at 5:30 a.m. – not just before 9, but also 8, 7, 6, and 5:45. The ladies said it was always best in the morning – not 9, but 6. At 5:30 in the morning a consistently obnoxious rain poured down through cruelly cold air. We got to the shop on main street at 5:55.

“Late,” Lula said.

Real keen people were on the bus. We shuffled in. We were told to take some stuff we had to go back to Squatchy for, and went to get our wetsuits from the Siberian changing rooms. I took off my clothes, slipped one foot into it, which was wet, hence the name. It’s not called coldwetsuit though, but should be. I could’ve killed Lula. There was no way you could get me into that thing. I was a travel writer, adventure tour leader, master diver with two masters, rafter, biker down big mountains at high velocity, vert skater, parachuter, but I broke.

“Lula!” I hollered.

“What?” She scampered out.

“There’s no way you can get me in that thing. It’s wet.”

“So’s mine.”

“Doesn’t make mine any warmer. I’m not sure I want to go. I might just curl up in Squatchy and wait for you. You have a great time.”

“If you don’t go, I won’t go,” she said.

“I’ll see if I can get a dry one.”

“See if we can get a refund,” she said.

I asked the older guy with curly gray hair if I could get a dry one.

“I’m afraid that’ll be impossible,” he said. “They’re all wet from yesterday.”

“Fuck the dolphins,” I said.

Then I heard Lula’s cute little voice say, “The only thing I want from this vacation is to fulfill my lifelong dream of swimming with dolphins.”

His name was Dennis. Dennis handed me another wetsuit. I got to the bathroom, took off my pants, and slipped a leg in. It was wet -- soul penetrating cold -- hadn’t had a strong cup of coffee – and it was 6 a.m.-are-you-all-out-of-your-fucking-minds-cold-wet?! The bus, full of 30 people who were able to get into and withstand their coldwetsuits, waited. I went back out there.

“Don’t you have anything dry? I can do all kinds of stuff, but this sucks.”

“How unfortunate you feel that way.”

I went back in the bathroom and stood under the heater. I heard Tracey ask Dennis where I was.

“Moaning in the men’s.”

That moved me from thoroughly annoyed to absolutely angry. I jumped into the suit and stomped off. Dennis stuck flippers and a mask in my hand.

“That’s not a great suit,” he said.

“No shit.”

“You should put this one on.”

“You got me in this, you better get me out the door now.”

We were the last ones on the magic bus. The girl who told me she couldn’t help me gave a cute and funny talk about playing with the dolphins and singing that endeared her to everyone but me while the coldwetsuit sucked the lifewarmth from the bottom of my soul. After 15 cute minutes the bus drove back to the harbor where we’d spent the night. I tried to be positive, but it didn’t work much. I tried to smile but Lula had gone into ‘I’m freezing blue and can’t notice’ coma. Everyone boarded the boats, and the steady drizzle turned into a uniform drizzle. The kind of drizzle that has a face with a tongue sticking out.

“Are you going back to the shop?” Tracey asked Dennis.

“Yes,” he said. “Look. Why don’t you just go, if you don’t want to swim you can get dressed and watch from the boat.”

“Refund?”

“Yes,” he said, I think from being sick of us. How unfortunate he felt that way. I said we came this far – figuring I’d have to shove her into her dream as the whooping moans, the uncontrolled, panicky inhalations along with the cold water shock paralysis of her legs from diving the day before echoed in my memory. They took two people off the big boat and put us on. We stood there shivering and I was too cold to put down the backpack or sit or listen. Only two more hours to go. A girl came up and said, “Are you sure you want to go?”

“No,” I said, “We don’t want to go.”

She put the gangplank back down and said, “I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t go on a day like today either.”

Dennis drove us back to the shop. We told him we scuba dove the day before. See, we’re not wimps, you could start us off with dry wetsuits, for $90, at 6 in the fucking morning. You jackass, I should’ve said, I should take your walking stick and shove it up your ass and beat you against the sidewalk in front of your mother for what you did. Boob.

I simmered down after a hot shower, long meditation under the heater, and breakfast at the Why Not Café. We slept till noon and drove to Picton where we waited four hours for the ferry that cost $287. The sun set on the Marlborough Sound -- a place once perfect, now logged. On the ferry, we watched “Men in Black,” loved it.

The ferryman told us about a Top Ten Premiere Campervan Park outside of Wellington, but we realized what a jackass he was after we drove off the ferry past tankers, and into an industrial zone to a little patch of grass on the bump of someone’s ass when we had to fight off a German lady holding spots for her husband – or trying to – there weren’t any left. Like my Dad Larry always said, “You goddamn shitbirds.”

Wellington is trendy-groovy-happy and not 25 years behind the rest of the world, as I’d heard from the folks in Sydney who aren’t and were. Wellingtons serve impeccably realized oversize mugs chock full of latté, boots notwithstanding, the best kind of chock. If realized with extraordinary vision the world over, perhaps such depredations and barbarity as we’d suffered at nothing short of a Top Ten Premiere Campervan Park and at the cold-hearted hands of The Coldwetsuit Butcher of Kaikoura, Dennis.

I drove five hours in the dark directly up the North Island, not only missing points of interest Porirua, Paraparaumu, and Pahiatua, but driving Squatchy’s become like manhandling Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The gas man said, “Yup, he’s fucked.” That confirmed my suspicions.

Let’s hope tomorrow’s dolphin swim goes better. It has to. If You’re up there…

Cassana, Marineland, Napier, New Zealand

November 18 – Napier

Bob said two of the four female dolphins we were going to swim with at Marineland in a pool were captured out in the Napier Bay at the age of two – 25 and 27 years ago when it was still considered okay to do so. The others are 15 and 17 and were not returned to the wild because they had to do the shows.

“No,” they said they didn’t want to, he said.

“No,” they were older already than dolphins in the wild and would die, he said.

They were more beautiful than Charlie’s Angels, and almost so were their names. Cassana was a short and stout love bullet. Kelly had a large dark fin with unremarkable nomenclature. Selina leant left so they made fun of her by calling her “Seleaner” which hurt her feelings. And dear sweet Shana who had a notch in her back from a shark attack. I’d be shy too.

“No,” the notch was from a barnacle that fell off. Bob. Like his name.

“Dolphins are pure love,” Lula says. Then one bit her.

No, I’ve never seen anyone so happy. Warm, clear day, just the two of us in a big blue pool twelve feet deep and four speeding torpedoes whipping around us. They inspected us and rang the bell – as Lula said, “from captivity madness.” You’d go for one and she’d swim away, knowing full-well it was playtime, seeing how idiotic you could make humans be. I swam upside down as they did and did circles as they swam around us always just out of reach – real teasers. They’d head right for you, you dive, they fake left, you go left, and they dart right. You swim and point and swallow saltwater brought in that day – 16 Celsius – and they get to swim your heart out in circles looking you right in the eye – singing back to Lula – taunting you, ringing the bell, come and get me, you chase, and they always stay just out of reach. Playful like kids, flirtatious, gray, black and white, some stout, others with racing stripes. They had a lot more energy than we did, and I used every bit of it to sing underwater, do flips, chase, and they loved it, swimming rings around us up and down and on the surface and jumping out of the water over me gyroscopically. An hour went by and it seemed like a minute.

NZ swimming with dolphins Lula waving 2.jpg

Regan said he’d never seen ‘em like that since they started in ’92. He took pictures.

I was worn out I couldn’t drive past Tampo – and barely three hours to there. We stopped at De Britt’s Thermal Hot Springs Resort – maybe just to be close to the water, maybe because we were both in a common dolphin daze, maybe because we wanted to get romantic in a private hot bath, weightless, sacred, pure, which created interesting… Maybe.

November 19

Squatchy spluttered and splattered the whole four hours to Auckland even when I hit him and called him a apiece of junk that I hated and couldn’t wait to leave for nearly killing us by pooping out as a semi-truck descended on us at 120 kph. He crawled in to the garage on his hands and knees.

Just under an hour previous Lula had said to call Maui Van Rentals and see where they were. “No,” I said, “it’ll be obvious.” After three sets of directions and three aborted attempts, we found it. In that last half hour, they had me dump the shit tank, I got gently misted, and threw away my clothes and compass. I was already in a foul mood from exhaustion and road rash, so roof hatch finger smashing meant they had to complete Squatchy’s colonic in scope inspection.

“Sorry Squatchy.” It was a tearful goodbye. “I didn’t mean it little buddy, you were the best little Squatchy ever.” But as soon as we were out of earshot I said under my breath, “I’m so glad to be out of that thing.”

Lula chased me up the side of the road making that last dash laid back, full of laughter, and fun. We got to the airport 25 minutes before the plane left, paid the departure tax, checked in and ran for the farthest gate, landing in our seats at the very last minute.

The last glimpse from the plane we see – snow-covered mountaintops halting ominous clouds from the east – clear to the west – will eternally be The Land of the Long White Cloud to me.

The Frugal Cannibal

A crucified wail lacerated my brain, I woke up, drooling and disoriented, the 747 popping bolts, ripping in half, women and children crying, plunging into the dark Pacific, shark food…

Women and children crying? Wipe drool. Take inventory. Tracey snoozing. Ceiling smooth. Screeching, relentless owl?

Reconnoiter: Glance backward. Intel: Target acquired. Debrief: Truculent cherub sleeping like a, well, baby until 5 clicks at which time FUBAR. I shoved my fingers in my ears and tried to let my inner child cry it out. Harmonize. Empathize. It wasn’t working. The squall never waivered or floundered once. Squall of Sound. The squall before the storm. And after. And during. Where is this kid getting all this air?

For the life of me I can’t remember why we’re going to Fiji. I’ve never in my life had any interest in Fiji. All I know about Fiji is that it was known as the frat for losers and “English is the lingua franca in Fiji.” I don’t know why this cracks me up so much. Otherwise, these are the pearls of wisdom I’ve harvested that I think are going to come in particularly handy:

▪ killing time, fooling around - moku siga - (moku singah)

▪ wandering around - gade - (gan-day)

▪ go slowly, take your time - vaka malua - (vaka-mahluah)

▪ eat heartily - kana vaka levu - (kahna vaka layvu)

▪ taboo, forbidden - tabu - (tamboo)

▪ exclamation of regret - isa, isa lei - (ee-sah, ee-sah lay)

▪ ashamed, shy - madua - (man-doo-ah)

▪ go ahead and try - tovolea mada - (toe-vo-lay-ah mahndah)

▪ a request - kerekere - (kerri-kerri)

▪ grass, dead chiefs’ wives strangled to join them - koko - (ko-ko)

▪ logs, men killed for rolling of war canoes - lago - (lah go)

▪ birds of the sail, dead children of enemies hung from masts - manu manu leelaka - (mah-nu mah-nu lee-lah-kah)

I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with the cannibalism of the cannibals of “The Cannibal Isles,” but I savor the way killing time is synonymous with fooling around. It peels back the layers of the fierce Fijian façade to reveal a delicious irony, decadent humor, and a deeply delicate, tender subtlety. How can you not find it fascinating that the same people who early Europeans (the ones not eaten or pre-eaten) said chowed down on bokola (technical term for dead man’s flesh) so “green from putrescence” that “they were made into puddings,” used the same tongue to turn a phrase like “dead enemies’ kids” into a poetic feast such as “birds of the sail?” It’s not so simple a matter as to dismiss them as savages. Koko and lago alone cut to the bone of a collective rapier-sharp wit and keen intellect. As they say, you are what you eat.

Alright, they’re herding us off the plane (they can’t seem to get us off fast enough), I guess that’s enough about cannibals and honestly, I can’t stomach anymore right now anyway. I am looking forward to next week though, I peeked over a guy’s shoulder and saw this headline that said, NEXT WEEK: A naturalist’s look at cannibalism in Fiji

My mouth waters just imagining what kind of choice cuts a naturalist can cook up. Mr. Journalist, you’re an archeologist. Before I forget, I’ve got to remember to remember this whenever I’m conversing in Fijian with Fijians, the v is a voiced bilabial fricative. Can you believe it, a voiced bilabial fricative? Is that crazy or what? If you’re tongue talented, you could probably skirt by with an advanced labiodental approximant, but if you don’t slide your tongue between the lips just right, you’ll obviously send up a massive red flag and you might as well scream, “Hey, look at me, I’m a dumbass foreigner.”

FUN FACT: Almost nobody on the planet distinguishes between the hard v of the voiced bilabial fricative and the soft v of the bilabial approximant, but Fijians do and guess who else? That’s right, Chihuahuans. Were Aztecs cannibals?

We walked in the airport and had no idea where we were going. This was the one country I literally made zero plans for. Some dude told me to. come to Fiji. I said ok. And that was it. All we had was what we carried and the hot dry furnace blast that smelled like fried chicken every time the sliding doors opened to the outside world. It also smelled like burning fields, but not quite, I couldn’t tell what it was.

Tracey went to talk to “that” travel agent, and I wandered off to look for brochures about cannibals. I sure as hell didn’t want my dream of writing “The Soup-To-Nuts Cannibal Cookbook” to whither and die on the vine. I just felt like it could help so many people, the poor, the hungry, overpopulated countries, foodies… It wasn’t even a stretch of the imagination to see Bokola (we’ll market test rebranding iterations) emerge as the fastest growth, highest yield market in the world. I could imagine a revolution sweeping across domains as diverse as husbandry, food service, and human resources, a whole new “Flesh Chef” genre of shows where dinner is hunted and killed, butchered, and based on Michelin metrics on steroids, the Ultimate Flesh Chef has to choose wisely based on body fat, ethnicity, gender, region, diet, etc., Anthony Bourdain tracking down the best tasting people on the planet, and restaurantourism.

It would open up all kinds of traditional and as-yet-unimagined industries to the free market, releasing new revenue streams, allowing capital to flow unhindered while alleviating the global strain on natural resources. It’s an environmentally sustainable, fiscally responsible, and actually profitable paradigm with the potential to save us from the sixth extinction. Everyone complains about how they hate the system, we need to do this and that, run the rats out of Washington, take control back from the World Bank which cripples countries, but what else has anyone proposed? In pragmatic terms, it’s the most compelling proposal that’s actually fairly modest that I’ve heard yet, especially compared to the alternative. However, if we don’t move swiftly, humanity won’t have a voice in its fate.

All I found was a yellowed map blue-tacked to the wall and taped with spider veins in a valiant but lost battle by That One Wall Map At The Airport Preservation Society of Fiji.

Tracey bounced back, enthusiastically saying, “I met a travel agent named Wise.”

I glanced over her shoulder at the enormous colored man in the flowery skirt, “Was he?”

“He said, ‘My dear, you get what you pay for.’”

“Is that wise or obvious?”

“I don’t know but I like him.”

I looked up at the map, 322 islands. Outside, chaotic clatter. I followed.

Wise presented us with several options on Viti Levu, beautiful resorts, golden beaches, emerald tropicalia… Florida for Ozzies – Fozzies.

“I think we’re looking for an authentic experience, the real Fiji.”

“But not too real,” Lula interjected.

“We don’t wanna hang out with sit by the pool and sip frou-frou drinks charged to the room kind of people.”

“That sounds good to me,” Lula said.

The agent nodded at both of us, “I understand.”

He flipped through some brochures, “very nice, lovely, lovely, very upscale,” all upscale, all too expensive. Having ascertained the big spenders he was dealing with he worked his way down to the next level from a homemade notebook with photocopied flyers and lazily arranged pictures slipped in plastic sleeves of “quite affordable accommodations.” Some good, some so-so, then one caught my eye.

A picture taken from out on the water showed a friendly native staff waving awkwardly in front of a sign that read, “Bule Welcome to Waya Lailai Island Resort Fiji Is” on a pristine beach with plenty of palms, hammocks, huts on a hillock that shot straight up a luscious mountainside capped with an enormous rock that begged to be climbed.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Ah, Waya Lailai in the Yasawa Islands is perfect, it’s the real Fiji. It’s locally owned, the staff are very friendly, you can visit their village, see how Fijian life is, sometimes they invite you to their home, Lailai has an excellent beach, the reef right is directly off the beach, you can snorkel, you can rent jet skis, scuba dive, sail, rent speed boats, as you see they have bures right here on the beach, or if you prefer breakfast, lunch, and dinner are included, the food is very good, authentic, but very rich…” Not the thing to say. The literal translation is “mediocre, heavy, greasy slop we sling to tourists.” Lula will not eat that shit up with relish, but she didn’t flinch so I wasn’t going to say anything. It’d be about the same anywhere.

“It’s clean?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s not luxury, but it is very nice, and affordable. I think it’s exactly what you are looking for.”

“You like it?” I asked.

“You do.”

“Yeah, I do. If we can get one of those rooms right on the water.”

Wise called to check and spoke in Fijian, laughed, and hung up.

“That bitch,” he said, “She’s always making love on the phone.”

Susie, a sweaty lady, slapped him. The fat on her arms jiggled.

“Good news,” he said. “They have a beachfront bure available, this one.”

“This is our patio?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll take it.”

“I’ll need $200, Fijian.”

I turned white-eyed to Lula.

“What’s your commission?” she asked. She thinks life’s too short to fuck around with bullshit.

“Yes,” he said, “Ten, twenty, thirty percent... More if they want me to market them. Sign here my friend. If you walk in you pay the same price they pay me to get customers.”

His eyes were so warm, if he ripped us off, it’d still be worth it. You could consider it as a donation to his family. No point in worrying about it anyway, there was no way to check it, plus he arranged a place for us on Viti Levu for the night since the boat went out in the morning.

Lula’s credit cards were declined. She called them. This made Wise nervous. He couldn’t pay for a call to the States with six-month’s salary. She tried to up her limit, “Yes. I’m employed. M. Roberts. I’m a personal assistant. Last year? Thirty-three thousand. Yes, actress. Dove campaign. A slum shack in Texas. Yes, I’m a slumlord, but I only have one.”

That cleared up, the charge went through, and Wise handed us our tickets and said, “Bula,” the perfect word for any occasion.

Ready was waiting. The taxi driver ripped through seedy Suva, passed a green hospital, squat little green houses almost as big as but not as exciting as St. Patrick’s Day presents if they existed in pale mint green by the color-sucking low watt lights of third world lamp posts. We left town and ascended a long and winding road through scrubby hills to the other side of the island where the boat was to leave in the morning. The sun set behind us over a hill. I smelled brush fires again and asked Ready, “Is that a cannibal cookout I smell?”

“Burning fields,” he said. That might be a touchy subject. Probably gets under their skin. I bet it’s hard to swallow.

It was hot as Hades at 9 p.m. I could imagine high noon on Waya, no A/C, no fan, and Lula doubled over with constipation as an alien white worm resolutely refused to back its way out her colon.

“Hey Ready, why does toilet water drain the opposite way down here?”

“Does it?”

“Gravity,” Lula said, “The poles spin on an charged.”

“I know all that.”

“Hey Ready, can I buy kava in a bottle?”

He explained something at length I couldn’t catch a word of. Maybe because English is the lingua franca of Fiji.

He dropped us off in Latauka at the Coconut Inn. A song called Ma Tulele played in the lobby. The man said nothing and showed us to a Holly Hobbie pink room with the first humidifying air conditioner I’d ever seen, a saunavator. It was more than I ever dreamed.

We went down to dinner. A few fans tried to cool us off. A pregnant cat and a dog with a lopped-off tail navigated the dark, empty street. The lady was friendly but quiet. I couldn’t identify anything on the Fiji Platter, but it was delicious if you didn’t have taste buds.

They played new Elton John. We didn’t like it. Lula contended Elton actually liked his new music.

“He’s trapped in fat, middle-aged fear,” I said.

“He’s probably surrounded by people who are afraid to tell him the truth.”

“Nobody likes the truth.”

November 20

The 8 o’clock wake-up knock came a few minutes early. The soft sheets were hard to imagine parting with, and I rolled Lula over like driftwood. She must’ve been thinking the same thing.

“Your bus is here,” a man called.

We shuffled around getting ready, I sang silly songs, and Lula saying she woke up on the wrong side of the head.

Peni was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “Bula!” he boomed – a short older man with bloodshot eyes.

“How are you?”

“Excellent. How are you?”

“Oh, great, I’ve been drinking kava.”

“I’ve heard the rumors.”

“You want a cup?”

“I’d love a cup.”

He sent a man to get one.

“I am Peni. Look at this.”

He opened the Lonely Planet to a page about pig hunting, pointed to himself, and asked, “Do you pig hunt?”

“I’ve hunted bacon.”

“Ha! Then you would love pig hunting!”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“A what?”

“What do you hunt them with?”

“Spears.”

“The pigs would have nothing to fear from me.”

“Oh, then I can teach you. And you can see a waterfall, a dam, and a village, here are pictures.”

“Lovely, really.”

His man brought a big bowl of brackish water – right of water, left of mud – and two polished coconut cups. He scooped up kava with a cup, handed it to Peni, who clapped and accepted it. It didn’t have the ceremony I was expecting. The blanket. The rest of the tribe…

“Bula,” he said, drank it in one, turned it upside down, set it down, and they clapped three times. I clapped three times. Very poor syncopation. He scooped a cup and proffered it to me.

“Bula!” I barked, clapped, drank, turned it upside down, and we clapped three times. My mouth went slightly numb. Then the third fella did it. Lula came down and had one. Not like her to drink at 8:15 in the morning.

“How long will you be on Waya?” Peni asked.

“A week.”

“Too long. Cut it short and see some of this island. We’ll take you on a three-day adventure! You can sign up right now!” He took another cup and handed me another. The hard shell.

Ma came out and asked, “Are you going to Waya? Your ride’s here.” The first had left without us.

“I promise I’ll call you Penis,” I said.

“Peni!”

“Yes, I know, we will kill pigs like champions!”

No we wouldn’t. But I slipped him a tenner for the kava and he helped me with out bags, and I wondered if I let him take me pig hunting he would eat me. I’d read pig hunting was code for human hunting.

The van was almost full. Tracey sat in the middle next to a quiet little guy from Australia. The Nice President of Fiji had just died so the main road was blocked and we took a dirt road through the hills where the van broke down. We climbed out. Little houses with corrugated tin roofs surrounded us, some clearly Indian Fijian – others Native Fijian. Workers in cane fields. Trains pulling sugar cane seemed endless. Kids waved at us.

While the driver fixed the van, we got to know each other: two Scots, two redheads (one from Portland, one from Kamloops, Canada), one Austrian Hans, a German girl, an American anthropologist from Santa Fe who loved Austin and had a weak ponytail, a German couple, and Lula and me. They’d all met on the plane and stumbled into a guy who sold them on Waya – tourinertia.

Lula looked at me and said, “There’s rattling in my ear that won’t go away.” Flushed, she fanned herself, sat in the shade of the van in the dirt, and said “I’m dizzy. Hypoglycemic.” She held her hand. “The shakes.”

The others told the travelers’ tales of distant countries and sunken boats and cottages and camps and the older Scot had a wandering eye and wouldn’t shut up and Austrian Hans blathered and the young Scot who worked as a builder in Australia said their arms were twice the size of his. He loved Ozzies but they were worriers, and he told the redheads that Celtics isn’t pronounced like the basketball team and where were they from and…

Lula looked pathetic. Like death. I felt helpless.

At Lautoka, we had breakfast in a shabby place – a meat pie, coffee, sponge cake, and a black bean and chicken curry. Lula choked down some rice and felt a little better, preferring nausea to death. Luckily I like road kill. My Dad was cheap and bought discount steak that was blue around the bone. Then we went to the sprawling fruit and vegetable garden and got pineapple from a lady who couldn’t stop laughing. Something about me. We stocked up a little more at the supermarket (including a bottle of rum – I hadn’t been truly drunk the whole trip), and on the way back an older Indian fellow, neatly dressed, said, “Did I talk to you before?”

“No.”

“Beware the sorceress.”

“Why thank you, I will.”

Fijians are helpful. I got a great feeling from all the people I met in Narda and Lautoka – their smiles and hellos and laughter – and they don’t just make eye contact, they look into your soul.

So many cultures won’t even make eye contact, let alone warn you of sorceresses or look around your soul.

As we came out of Pizza Inn, I yelled, “Hey!”

The van stopped and reversed and we jumped in.

“If you don’t want us to come, just tell us,” I said.

We got to the boat, which rocked a lot and smelled like gas and broke down several times and several times we gave gas to passing fisherman.

After a few banged up hours we came to a volcanic island, ringed with sandy beaches, rocky beaches, and palm trees. The seas pitched hardest the final 15 minutes as the water balked and bucked and dispersed all that energy from getting channeled into a narrower area by the reef, but we were greeted by a band with guitars and ukuleles and that made it all worth it. They carried up the luggage – all smiles – variously introduced themselves, Sammy, Joe, names I can’t remember, and we checked in. They asked Lula if she was vegetarian, she said no, which they took as a good sign. Redhead passed out dates to everyone that looked like beetles, reminding Lula of the grasshoppers in Bangkok.

Obnoxious Scot managed to keep his mouth shut, or maybe talked at someone else, so we had our first nice, normally paced conversation with the others.

“Yes … big old things … they eat them … by the bagful?”

“And fish jerky,” Lula added. “Little strips of rotten fish.”

Ew, ah, I don’t understand how people can eat that, live like that, they’re different from me…

Waya Lailai Island Resort, Yasawa Islands, Fiji

Our bure (boo-ray: cottage) perched on the hilltop directly overlooking the beach – past a few flowering bushes and a palm tree that shaded the patio. It’s like the fort you always wanted as a kid. A cross between Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe. The Robinsons can’t navigate their way out of a shoebox.

The wind blew strong, keeping it cool. I can’t emphasize how important this is. In Thailand, our room baked so hot we were ready to be served. Compound that with the fact that Thais are surly and underpaid, and Fijians are happy and well paid. The food even reflects that, and thus you have the difference between a trammeled truck stop and paradise.

Thick logs fastened with vines constituted the infrastructure, which supported a thatch of interwoven palm fronds. Shells decorated the counters, a wreath of sweet white and pink flowers lay on the bed, and a lovely bunch of coconuts someone had shellacked hung on the wall with woven palm turtles, a native tapestry, little baskets with cute as their purpose, a big bed for lovers, a mosquito net, a small sink in the corner, shower, and toilet. We christened our bure, “Yabola.” Lula loved it – I loved it – and we immediately made love.

This was the paradise we needed to do absolutely nothing. Make love, read, sleep, drink, eat, dive, explore the mountain behind us, the island around us, and the sea before us. Clear, sparkling, forever. It’s unbelievable from the fragrant flower to the shining sea to the love we make, the beautiful things the earth has given us. And even more unbelievable is that we go on about our way without ever discovering it most of the time.

Smiling black ladies with beautiful afros fed us a yellow potato curry, beef (maybe goat) that fell off the bone, a spinach veggie dish, rice, Indian sponge bread, and watermelon. Breakfast consisted of oatmeal, pineapple, and watermelon (our engagement fruit). I love kiwi, but as Lula says, you can’t beat sweet watermelon on a hot day.

In between we took sunset walks on the beach where we loved it up beyond a massive volcanic rock, black and rough. At night we laid on the lawn or the beach or in the hammocks under an infinity of stars. And we read and ate and slept and swam and talked.

November 22

We didn’t hear them blow the conch shell for breakfast. I never do unless I’m voracious. Lula had been up since she got up to throw the shells lined up on our patio at the rooster and chase out the Myna birds after she opened the door to get the cock to fuck off. None of that noise mattered anyway because soon I overheard the staff, charming as they are, yelling. It’s their main form of communication. In fact, I saw Steve walk away from Maria so he could yell something to her. Up the hill in the long house, everyone had commenced breakfast so we grabbed two plates with two slices of white bread and a leetle piece of watermelon, a bowl of corn flakes, and coffee, and joined Welsh Paul, his wife Martine, and their 2½ year old son Jordan who Lula’s fallen in love with.

Paul is white, Martine is black, and Jordan is beautiful. They had an Inn outside Oxford in a town called Burberry. The bar made the best money and kept up the restaurant and rooms. Six days a week. Locals you can set your watch by. They sold it, bought a van to get around the world, spent lots of money to fix it up, and had it stolen in Bulgaria. The police put Paul in prison in Sofia. He had to prove he didn’t steal it.

“How did you know it was missing?” they asked.

“When I went to lean on it, I fell.”

That screwed them out of 2,000 pounds, not including bribes to get through Romania where they’d take away their passports at routine checkpoints until they paid to get them back. The main road to Sofia stopped dead. They bribed the usual soldiers who pointed them through the fields up a dirt road. When they were lost they had to pay for directions.

“It’s much easier with an around-the-world plane ticket,” Paul said.

Steve was just arriving from the beach. Heather told him he looked like a drowned rat.

“I think she means a handsome drowned rat,” I said.

He did in fact resemble a rat with a big pointy nose and angular face, but not an ugly one. He’s a Jew from Philadelphia. He went to McGill for an M.A. in anthropology, and like me, respects people who get useless degrees. A useless degree shows that you want to learn something, and that you don’t care what people think, and in fact, they’re often earned in spite of others – sophisticated rebellion. Educated contempt.

He lives in Santa Fe. He’s a music critic. Wrote his thesis on reggae, was in Jamaica when Marley died, and had to smoke lots of good herb or his research wouldn’t have been authenticated. He went to Marley’s funeral.

“Greatest scam of my life,” he said. “That and peyote ceremonies where they cordially serve beer too. It works with Native Americans. I had a ceremony with the woman Carlos Castenadas based his ‘historical fiction’ on. I know her nephew Fidel well. Castenadas wrote that stuff and she never knew a thing about it. Powerful woman – just knew how everyone was by telepathy.”

We got on the subject of mountain climbing, which I told them I didn’t do.

“I can’t understand it when people climb Mount Everest and die,” Lula said, “and everyone acts so surprised.”

“Tragedy strikes!” Steve said.

“How could this have possibly happened?” I said.

“I’ll tell you,” Lula said, “They’re dumbasses.”

“I’m going to New Zealand to travel with a group of monks for a month and join a Maori ceremony. They can be fierce.”

“You’re a dumbass,” Lula said. “No offense.”

“No, no, I am, but it’s a great opportunity,” he said, “if I live through it.”

“I don’t think they’ll eat you,” I said. “Unless they’re hungry.”

November 23

Floating in the water under a merciless 11 a.m. sun, Young Scotty the Alcoholic told me a story. The subject was the meaninglessness of life. He was in a town halfway between Saigon and Hanoi – known in the war for R&R for American soldiers. It was broken in. He shared a room with Susumi, a Japanese guy who fell in love with a prostitute. Susumi walked in on her doing it with a Vietnamese guy.

“Customer?” I asked.

“No, truth be told, it was the other way around. The fellow was her boyfriend, Susumi was the customer. He’s a big fellow, Susumi, and he beat the guy up. I’m in the room reading, and he comes back, doesn’t say a word. Twenty minutes later these guys come in with machetes and knives, and there’s a girl with ‘em who speaks English, the cow, I could’ve killed her that night. She says they want to see Susumi outside. They’re going to kill him. I say, look, you know the Japs, photo, photo, they aren’t so smart, travelling – what do you want to kill him for? This went on for about an hour, groveling wouldn’t explain it. Finally I says, look, what do I care? Why am I getting in the middle of this? You’ve got more in common with them than I do. You’ve got slant eyes, he’s got slant eyes, and they relented. But he had to say sorry to the leader because he couldn’t lose face. So they take Susumi to see the guy who slaps him whap! across the face. But it’s just a slap. A mercy slap. Then Susumi has to say he’s sorry after the guy’s slapped him, you know? He apologizes, and the guy slaps him again.”

It gets better.

Scotty traveled to Cambodia with Susumi. They picked up a third party, Mario, who spoke Japanese. One day Susumi finds his money belt has been stolen. Scotty looks around and sees the window’s open, and the barbed wire outside has been stepped on. He goes down to reception and asks them to call the police. One hour, no police. He goes back down. They tell him, ‘You have had nothing stolen from this hotel.’ They won’t call the fucking police, right? Probably wouldn’t do any good, anyway, he’s lost his money, but they left his passport. I travel on with ‘em, Mario’s loaning him money. I go one way eventually, they go another. I get to Bangkok and see a picture of Mario in all the hostels. It says to watch out for this Italian who speaks Japanese. He’ll befriend you and rob you. I run into this American girl I know on the Kho Sahn Road, says Mario’s staying right there, the cheeky bastard. She saw him yesterday. Susumi went back to Japan to go back to earn the money he borrowed off Mario that he stole from him in the first place. For all I knew he borrowed the $500 off his parents and was wiring it to Bangkok at that moment.”

“What’d you do?”

“I went to the Japanese Embassy and talked to the highest official in charge. I had Mario’s passport number from the flyers and I gave it to him. He contacted Susumi. Plus, Mario lived in Japan, worked in a pizza joint, and he had to leave every few months to renew his visa. So when he tried to get back into Japan, they’d ship him off.”

“They couldn’t do anything about the thefts?”

“No, it was Cambodia, not Thailand, but he’d get it when he got to Japan.”

“Didja ever find out what happened?”

“No, I never heard the end of it, but the official gave me tea and sent me back in an official car to my hotel. I know I could get a Jap visa now.”

November 24

We slipped between the soft sheets of island lethargy. The only thing that passed for time was the constant whisper of waves. Sleep came soon after dark, again after lunch at the hottest time of the day, and we awoke when the rooster screamed bloody murder under the window and Lula took shells and fired them at him all the way up the hill. She’s constantly chasing cocks.

If there were breezes, we slept well. If not, we read books from the library about Fiji or tousled until the early morning hours when the earth cooled and brought merciful breezes. Shade is the other savior of the tropics. We sheltered under it while the sun plodded on, a farmer in his field till all the day’s work’s done. Meals broke up the pacific monotony. Around 7 a.m. Andi would serve us two pieces of white toast, butter and jam, cereal, a piece of pineapple, and one of watermelon. After all had been served, it was polite to go back for seconds. Only the older lady took a dislike to Lula and treated her as if she was taking pieces of watermelon from the mouths of babies (hungry staff). For $100/day Lula didn’t think it was unreasonable to ask for enough food to keep her alive. She employed me to get her another piece because I could eat all the goat and lamb and root that even Jordan and Martine didn’t like. It didn’t take the older lady long to tell Andi, “He’s helping her,” not realizing I speak Fijian fluently. The redheads Stacey and Heather, who may have been friends precisely because they shared hair afire, abandoned the resort for fear of starvation. Stephen would leave the breakfast table to fix breakfast (of oatmeal) on his camp stove. I only needed a few crackers in the afternoon to get through the 6-7 hours between lunch and dinner, and sometimes I waddled to dinner full from lunch.

Lula asked, “Why can’t they just have more fruit and fish? We’re surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, aren’t we? And can’t potatoes be fixed other than in the yellow curry we’ve eaten six days in a row?”

Then, that very day, moments after she’d proposed the preposterous, confounded, exasperated, flat-out frustration, they served mashed potatoes with some sort of baked-in topping.

“Root,” I said.

“Nuh-uh!”

“Aubergine,” I said, “and baked bean-cabbage surprise.”

I realized it might have been the very day of my high school reunion in Roswell, Georgia, one of those places Nothing Ever Happens. Maybe some folks would sit around and wonder, “I wonder what that guy is doing?”

I was sitting on the veranda of my bure drinking Bounty Rum and Schweppes’s Orange and Mango Soda, catching a lethargic but meaningful palm-thatched buzz. If you were wondering.

I’d been working around the clock to figure out how time passes gentle as the wind under a palm tree. We thought about these things, and we talked about them at meals with Josef and Teresa from Austria, and Mark from Switzerland. We gave the three of them L.A. tips. Don’t go to The Hood, get a good street map, and don’t wander the beach at night. Drink margaritas. Buy Levi’s at Aardvark’s, etc... Through Frisbee we’d got to be good friends, and Mark went scuba diving with us.

Sammy took us out in the little boat with Cy – our “dive master.” They don’t do PADI here, so you hope all the equipment works. We went to an island where a sailboat anchored offshore and picked up an older, money pudgy American couple.

“Tracey and I are thinking of getting a boat like that,” I said, “but we don’t have any money.”

Sammy slapped me on the back.

We dove off the reef on the south side of the island, an area called The Maze. We saw a black-tipped reef shark, the hungry kind, and scuttled up onto a shallow reef shelf.

Sammy had the pen I’d given Nye the day before, and I asked, “Is Nye your boy?”

“Daughter,” he said.

I felt bad, but Sammy wasn’t exactly a diplomat himself.

The next morning, Lula went down to get equipment for snorkeling.

“Eight o’clock,” Sammy told her, a few minutes.

At eight, she asked him for flippers and a mask. He stared off into the distance. She did not exist.

“Where’s Jason?” he asked.

She said she came to get them. He ignored her so she went to the shop just below the reception bure, and Cy was there. He said the equipment was locked. I was lying in bed trying to go back to sleep after two strong cups of coffee at breakfast when she came in upset, told me what happened, and said the same thing happened a lot on the trip that I hadn’t noticed unless she told me. She could stand there in Thailand, for example, and the women would not say a word to her.

“Am I invisible?”

To which there was no reply.

“Because I’m white?” she asked.

“Because you have rights,” I said.

She mentioned she got that at home some, but only subtly.

“I wonder,” I said, “if America is looked up to for its social equality, no matter the distances left to travel, from women around the world whose veils keep their power hidden? I wonder, if you’re symbolic of that, won’t you draw fire from people who only know a shame-based reality, hobbled emotionally, who can only see through dominant-submissive bifocals?”

“I guess, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”

How small they are.

I wandered up to the bar on Waya and wound up meeting and talking to Mary. She was missing a front tooth and had a large-as-life smile. Mary’s cousin Moji served me cold Fiji beers and we talked about dating and marriage, the government village, education. Mary has a seven-month old baby named Maryanne who I met later that night, an Oriental-eyed child with lots of curly black hair right on top. She held my hand and stood up. I thought she might walk out of Mary’s arms.

She said when you get married in Fiji you stay in bed for four days and your “aunties” bring you food. They’d leave you alone if you were doing it. Then they come in and inspect the sheets after four days. Moji made fun of ‘em – holding up an imaginary sheet – looking at every particle. If there is blood everyone is happy.

“Oh God,” Lula said, “No one would be happy at our wedding. But some girls lose that from stretching.”

“I’d have my auntie sneak in a chicken,” I said. Emily had gathered round and another girl and they all loved this idea.

“If we had to do this in America, we’d have a lot of one-legged chickens hopping around.”

Moji said they mostly broke with tradition too and few people went through the four days because when they date, they go down to the beach and tell stories, particularly the eel story. Moji had two kids.

Recently, a local girl, 21, had an arranged marriage to a 36-year-old bald man from the mainland. He came over and her father said yes. As soon as he left the girl broke it off. Moji on the other hand was dating a girl on the mainland he boated two hours each way to see every day. Finally, they eloped, i.e., he brought her back to the island and married her – bordering on kidnapping.

I threw Frisbee with Mark from Switzerland and Jackie from Bristol. She said a Chinese-American girl had been coming and going for six months, sleeping with all the men, throwing money around, including her ex-boyfriend – the reason she was back now. They were having a meeting to figure out what to do about her. Also, Jack and Maro, the managers, had been embezzling funds. The money was supposed to go to the mainland and back to the village. All the village got was a new church and the place had to make a bundle. At first I thought Maro had ripped off his own people until I realized the government on the mainland had been ripping them off, and he was more likely to spread it around his village than anyone.

Maro joined us for kava at Mary’s that night. Fijian Paul walked down to the village with me, and I told him I respected them for having the time to share with friends, their kids, for opening their doors to us, for living so communally. As I told Mary theirs seemed to be a social society – utopian.

He told me if they never sent money to the mainland, the resort would support their three villages. The mess hall had been the school, the village had a landslide, and they moved to the other side of the island – some returned when a man from the mainland brought the beds and took half the money. They returned to the village by the resort to live in houses with no furniture, pictures, or electricity. They sat on mats, mostly around the kava bowl, faces lit by gas lamps. Mary, Sara, and Ray joined Paul and I for a long time for high and low tide bowls. Paul left to be a daddy and husband. Soon Maro came in. When I saw how close they all were I realized he was not a bad guy, and I imagined the money had been kept for Mary, the kids, her sister Ray, her husband Wise who sat in the back corner fixing lanterns and preparing dollar bags of kava – a drug culture. Ray and Sara said it was “good kava.” Stephen and I agreed, but it’s more of a social thing because it doesn’t do anything to you, it’s a placebo drug as far as I could tell. It’s no rum. By about 10:15 – after the generator had gone off at the resort, all the men who’d been drinking kava at the reception house wandered down to Mary’s. Wise was the man. The party moved to the patio and they mixed up all kinds of bowls. Sammy came down and Moji the Smiling Man, Joe and Solo, and guys and women I never learned their names, and Jackie the Annoying and Mark who may have slept with her but was a nice guy anyway. I never got fucked up, after 20 bowls, but tiredness and a Lula longing took me home along the low tide beach scattered with shells under the Milky Way.

When I lay down to sleep I saw the only effect of the kava – a flash of lightning behind my eyelids and an electric aftershock that jerked my body. God knows…

November 25

After breakfast, Lula said she wanted to climb the mountain with me so we put on sunscreen and headed out with water, camera, and journals. About twenty yards up the path she said, “Bye,” and turned around and went home. She’d wanted to do it because she felt like a whale, which was by no means true but women seem programmed to believe that anyway. It wasn’t reason enough to sustain her interest in the thick heat.

“I love you,” I said, as she turned and walked away. I was a little relieved because I needed some time alone, and hiking – against all the rules they tell you – is something I love to do alone. My head’s clear, body’s active, I look at the whispering grass, vines, tall trees burrowing powerful roots around black volcanic rocks, whatever. It’s one of those times I feel that everything actually is right with the universe, even if there is poverty and child abuse and all the rest. Somehow I think everything will come out alright. Then I stepped in a big hole.

I pulled my foot out quickly so no giant snake would take a bite, hurried along a few steps in case it decided to chase me, and stopped to catch my breath sweating profusely when I felt something on my shoulder which was a spider web that hosted its creator, a large black fellow, or lady, with orange markings, presumably racing stripes to speed its attack on my nose, waiting to be bitten about six inches away.

I brushed it off and trotted right on along my merry way, firmly believing that every blade of grass (which it was thick pretty much the whole way) and vine and twig was a snake or spider and maybe the world was as cruel or more cruel than my paranoid suspicions asserted on more than one occasion. Maybe everything wasn’t alright with the universe. Fuck it either way, right, same difference. Universe doesn’t care.

I came into a clearing with a panoramic view of the golden beach, coral reef, emerald isles, and eternity of sky and ocean, and calmed down.

After a short reflective sit in which all was right with the universe, I headed up again and passed a few fields full of a plant that looked like marijuana, but sadly was not. I emerged into a flatter area, with enormous rocks spewed from the volcano towering to my left and views of uninhabited beaches all around the other side of the island.

A man who’d played volleyball the day before was tending some plants. We exchanged bulas, and when I asked, he said the plant was tapioca.

The hike turned into a climb and I nearly reached the top where two American girls were on the way down. They were from San Diego, Kara and somebody. I don’t remember. Nice people, everyone here is, except the fat German ponytail guy who lecherously stares at Lula’s boobs, Obnoxious Scot, and when he’s wasted, Young Scotty the Alcoholic.

I reached the top, took off my backpack and shirt, and holding out my arms, I let the breeze dry the sweat dry off my back. I could see 360 degrees around Nature’s Magnificence. Sea, coral, green dropping to royal blue, the village far below, the next island Kuata you can swim to, rocky, mountainous, in turns arid and palm forested – reefs promising excellent snorkeling and diving – off, alone in the ocean, like massive underwater islands, giant turtles with single waves breaking about them, and a schooner with white sails skirting the island. The patchwork fields below. Rocky cliffs or crowns just keep getting higher on the other half of the island, grasslands along the top to get there, intersected by trails – the mainland – far off in the distance – smoke billowing from a field afire – hazy in the distance. And me atop my rocky throne trying to get it all down. I met a guy in Honduras who’d seen me writing and said, “Trying to get it all down?”

“Trying,” I said.

“Never can,” he said, “You can only try.”

I looked out to sea and saw islands, islands beyond islands, and beyond islands, beyond the beyond. How could you ever get it all down?

View from Mount Vatuvula overlooking Bligh Strait, The Cannibal Isles

You can’t, you can only try. Start at the beginning perhaps. Since nobody knows the beginning, you can say, “In the beginning, there wasn’t jack shit. Maybe some chaos, some calamity, some lonely old timey god.”

I find Hinduism’s honesty refreshing, “Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning… [but] who really knows… the highest in heaven, only he knows—or perhaps he does not know.”

He flip flops, but it was a flip floppy time. There was nowhere to put your root down, stick a stake a in the ground, plant your flag. There was no where at all, no was, no thing.

It’s hard to imagine no thing. That’s why I think without a leg to stand on, it was audacious of our ancestors to say, “In the beginning God,” or wakanda (Sioux), orenda (Iroquois), or mulungu (Bantu), “created the heavens and the earth.”

So you get something from nothing, nothing from something, something from nothing from something, and something from nothing from something from nothing. Any way you look at it, it’s nothing, and not nothing, and that’s saying something. In fact, it’s really just saying something. It is what it is. And it is what it isn’t. In logic, we learned that’s not logical. But this is myth, so in the beginning, according to the scribes that wrote the story, was actually the word. See, if you write it down, or rewrite it, revise it, edit it, reddit it, redact it, you can change the past, the present and the future. It’s like having a time machine in the palm of your hand. The pen is mightier than the sword (an impractical writing utensil), knowledge is power, and it’s as lucrative as choosing the winning numbers in god’s lottery every week (Oh my god, I won!), setting the odds (Yes, they’re against you), and holding all the aces (God hates you). It’s controlling the games, hearts and minds, kings and queens, history and destiny. It’s playing with some serious fire, the fire of the gods, and you know where that got Prometheus.

The Polynesians, Micronesians, and Macronesians believe/d in a moist dark chaos that the old timey god zapped with electricity or heated up like a sauce pan to create a Sky God and Earth Mother who had a bunch of dysfunctional children, like the Greeks and Norse and… This was usually because the father fucked his daughter so the mother and daughter had to be separated from the father even though he’s the perp.

It gives you the first taboo. It gives you a sun, moon, underworld, and some rules. It gives you cosmology, astronomy, religion, and ethics in one fell swoop. We’re off to a good start in pretty much every myth, religion, and mythic religion in the world. You’ve got variations where the son saves the day like Osiris, Isis, and Horus and God, Mary, and Jesus. You’ve got historical record keeping with the ages of man (India and Maya: 4 vs. Aztec, Greece, and Navajo: 5), floods (Judeo-Christian, Indian, Babylonian, Polynesian, Aztec, Greek, North American, Incan, Egyptian), the tree of life (reaching for the sky, firmly rooted in the earth, shaped now incidentally like the Milky Way reaching gravitationally up and down simultaneously), new gods killing old gods or worse, rebranding them in some shitbird funhouse mirror of conquerors, as well as fish (Babylonians, Fisher King, fishing for lost souls, Jonah, Moby Dick, or as some Polynesians say, “standing on a whale fishing for minnows”), birds, and serpents. Bird + serpent = dragon?

A lot of people think the ocean, the primordial soup, the hot, wet sexy whatever, got struck by a bolt of lightning (let there be light/ning), and like a big orgasm (as Osiris is believed to have done in the form of a meteor, which incidentally scientists traced King Tut’s dagger blade to), sparking life out of the basic building blocks that had been stewing for billions of years. Life squiggled, swam, slithered, crawled, walked, and climbed up out of the oceans and into the trees. Some said fuck this, and went back, the smart ones. Others hung out and ate bananas like it was their own personal Garden of Eden, flying from limb to limb, branching out, opposably, from tree to family tree, sampling an apple, then snap. We fell.

What do we do when we fall? We get back up again, at least that’s what we say to our kids and colleagues, thus the crucifixion game face, the resurrection spin, the tree of life tale, the cross logo, the body and the blood of Christ, transubstantiation, and next stop, cannibalism!

A Taste of Fiji: Its Culture and People

Tracing oral histories is like playing multiple games of telephone at once. Take a tribe, take 10, wipe ‘em out, start again. Have ‘em cross a continent, several oceans, and cross their wires with other cultures, conquerors, cyclones, and British bureaucracy. Then cross examine them and scream, “get your story straight!”

Ptolemy, a second-century Greek scholar in the Roman province of Alexandria, Egypt, compiled “Geographia,” a compendium with coordinates of the known Empire, plus some unknown for impish fun. The unknown included a quarter of the globe, which he was mathematically well aware of, and pertinently, terra australis incognita. This bit of impish fun sent Christopher Columbus off into the wild blue yonder to the ruination of a hemisphere, and along with some extremely poor translations of Marco Polo’s third-hand rumors (Thailand’s Lop Buri to Lo-huk to Locach to Boeach to Beach), go-getter Abel Janszoon Tasman launched a hopeless mission from Java in 1642 to discover Polo’s purportedly gold-rich Beach. According to Mercator’s 1541 projections based on Ptolemy’s reports from Marinos, Hipparchus, and gazetteers, Beach should’ve been right near Terra Australis at the intersection of Staten Island, the Solomon Islands, Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. That would’ve been fine if Thailand and Australia weren’t 3,000 miles apart, North America didn’t exist, South America and Africa were the same continent, and Ptolemy had invented the footnote.[1] It doesn’t seem like much, but those miles add up.

With what seems like prescience in hindsight, Abel landed in Tasmania, narrowly missed a marsupial who’d come to be known as Satan’s assistant, the Tasmanian Devil, and wander on to New Zealand where he’d boldly send his men out in a rowboat to get hacked to bits right where we made love under a sacred tree overlooking Golden Bay, formerly known as Murderers’ Bay or Massacre Bay depending on which dictionary you use.

Then he sailed up here to Fiji and unfortunately couldn’t visit with the friendly natives because the reefs were too dangerous, not even for a quick bite. Word about the reefs got around, which was a tough blow to Fiji’s burgeoning tourism industry. They loved to entertain, host huge feasts, and they were always so desperate to have people over to try out new recipes on. Nobody came around much though except Tongan Spring Breakers, and all they ever did was eat them out of house and home, run off paying customers, and turn around and bad mouth them to Captain Cook.

It was 1774 and Captain James Cook was a very busy man, following in the footsteps of the greatest explorer of the Twentieth Century, Captain James Kirk, possibly to the point of plagiarism. Cook mapped Canada. Kirk was from Canada. Kirk vowed to go “where no man has gone before.” Cook vowed to go “farther than any man has been before me.” Kirk’s ship was the Enterprise. Cook’s the Endeavour. I’m not judge and jury, I’m just laying down facts. You can decide what kind of character Cook is for yourself, just don’t try to put him in the same class as James Tiberius Kirk around me.

Cook and Elizabeth, a lovely girl from Wapping whom he married in Barking, had their fifth child George five days before embarking on his second whopping world tour, kissing babies, shaking hands, kissing hands, shaking babies, doing a little recon for world domination, and just generally gathering intelligence for King George who’d lost his. The Mad King was about to lose a colony, and it wouldn’t come as such a blow if he could remember where he put it.

He sent Cook off to find it, as he was very good at finding things, writing things down, and creative writing. For example, he documented Cook, Cooktown, Cook Rock, Cook River, Cook’s Bay, Cooks Anchorage, Cook Channel, Cooks Brook, Mount Cook, Cook Mountains, Cook Strait, Cook Island, Cook Islands, Cook Inlet, Cook Outlet, Cook Peninsula, Cook County, Cook Glacier, Father Isle, his son James Cook, Doubtful Island in a rare display of vulnerability, the Sandwich Island in a rare display of snackedge, Thirsty Sound to wash it down, Mount Warning, Point Danger, Cape Tribulation, Cape Flattery, Islands of Direction, Possession Island, and Booby Island, which he also named. He also claimed he discovered Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii, but the people who’d been living there took exception and sometimes won, as in the case of the Hawaiians who killed and snacked on him. It was all a big misunderstanding. They took for the god Lono, a common mistake apparently, and treated him like one. In return, he gave Hawaiians the nails they coveted. Well, technically, his men shaka wahine puka with their women for nails. That’s where we get the term “nail.”

Before Cook’s men showed the Hawaiians what great carpenters they were and the Hawaiians showed Cook’s men what great chefs they were, in between the Sandwich Islands and Fiji, and mere moments before Captain Cook was about to make a major announcement, the chiefs of Tonga broke into a bitter argument. The timing would prove Providential.

“What now?” grumbled his little buddy William Bligh.

“Chill out,” Cook said. “I’ll whip these swabbies into shape when I tap this oversize three-pronged wooden fork you could practically eat a horse with against this coconut cup that reminds me of a skull full of potty water, by the way are you buzzed? Oh my word, I’m totally buzzed. Don’t tell Liz I beg thee, little Willy. Where was I? Oh yes. As soon as these savages shut the up by God’s grace, I’m gonna make an announcement. Huge, as in, Cook huge. Cookville. Mount Cook. Cook Crater. Hey boy, yes, you, be so kind as to pour another potty water for this old white devil. Of course I mean to say kava kava ye moron… Ah yes, there’s the stench of the wench, the stuff of the—no, gracias, that’ll be all for now my fine noble savage, but stay close with that toilet bowl.

As I was saying, Bligh, I’m going tell these Tongans how I manhandled the Sandwiches, the Manwiches if you will, mandled them, nomenclatured the lot! Thirsty Sound too, yes yes, quite right! Almost too rich to swallow I know. But out here in the place of plenty of water, you are as free as an albatross to make it what you will. There’s no one even here! By God, what a place to be a white man and a gentleman to boot! Now harken ye this Bligh my lad, the Sandwiches are just for starters. The delicious line I’ve been stewing over all day in such seditious secrecy, savoring, spicing, mulling over and over in my mind’s hearth, rolling over and over on the spit of my tongue until I’ve got the juices tasty and ripe, this succulent little white lie of mine that’s certain to upend these fools and cause raucous belly laughs for generations of seamen to come, is that which I’m saving for last, just desserts as it were, ha ha! The finale grandé! That which hath the cherry on top say I unto ye.”

Bligh: Rolls eyes.

“If these ignoramuses ever finish bickering over which bitch is going to pass the pelt, I’m going to spoon feed them this delicious little morsel: are you ready?”

“Have been for quite some time, Sir.”

“Then here it is. Wait no more. The wait is over. This, is, what, I, shall, say: In sooth: In veritas: The English word for cooking, i.e., to cook, is so called in my honor. For I am just as the food you see before you. My name is Cook, literally, to cook, precisely because me, myself, and I, Cook, I’m synonymous with yummy eating. Har har har,” slaps knee, Bligh, and ‘boy.’ “Don’t think I won’t be remembered for pulling the wool over these idjits’ eyes with that little jest, my dear Mr. Bligh.”

“I hope so Sir, the spotlight on your sweet savory sauerkraut stew is certainly on the snuff.”

“It’s the scourge of scurvy, what do you expect, it’s not a sexy subject like sex or something. But here ye me this, for hath I saved the best for after last, the cherry on top of the cherry on top. I’m going to tell these mad Tongans who still seem to be arguing over who’s going to pick up the check or some other such nonsense, that ‘cooking’ was named after me.”

“I believe they are talking about cooking, Sir.”

“Is my name already being associated with the culinary arts? Do they suspect?”

“If you’d be so kind as to refrain from such extraordinary grandiloquence for a brief moment, Sir, I might be able to hear what they’re saying.”

Bligh nods at his interpreter who bends down and whispers, “They’re discussing the finer points of your preparation.”

“Preparation for what?” Cook asks.

“The feast.”

Cook is confused. Cook thinks this is the feast. Cook looks around. Cook sees finger foods. Cook sees a seafood platter. Cook sees the barbecue pit. Cook thinks it smells amazing. Cook looks at Bligh. Blankly.

“Ye daft old nincompoop,” Bligh says.

Cook is handed a cup of kava. Cook notices the cup is made from a skull. Cook notices the finger foods are fingers. Cook looks up and realizes the barbecue meat is his cabin boy.

They Scooby Doo it out of there before the Tongans have even begun to settle the ancient dessert feud between Guavans and Vanilla Coconut Creamers. Out to sea, Cook turns to Bligh and says, “Wasn’t that invigorating! We shall never speak of it again under penalty of treason. What’d they say the next stop was, Feces?”

“Fiji I believe, Sir.”

“Fiji. Hm. Not crazy about that. I was thinking maybe something more along the lines of, say, ‘The Cook Islands!’ What sayeth ye to that, Mr. Bligh?”

“Sweeter ring than Cannibal Islands, Sir, mayhaps sweetest ring of all ye hath named to date, why yes, wot wot!”

“You agree quite agreeably, Bligh, you’ll go far. To places. I’m certain of it. Oh look, there’s our sea bride herself, the very Goddess of Love in the flesh, yes, the blushing beauty Venus, oh how lurvely she is, faithfully guiding our way from one paradise to another...”

They followed Venus westward as The Royal Society requested from The Sandwiches (Hawaii, or Havaya’i, as it’s called by my mother-in-law Katy who has the right to butcher it with her sweet little Southern lilt because A) she’s been there and knows, and because B) she’s a fucking saint) to Tahiti (The Society Islands, Les Isles Societé) to Tonga (Tonga) and on to Fiji (Viti, as its inhabitants would have it called had anybody ever bothered to ask in the history of time, or as those of us with a more romantic nature like to call it, The Cannibal Isles).

In fact, they sailed right by where I’m sitting on Mount Vatuvula, a thousand feet on top of the rocky semi-arid somewhat arable yet opulently reef ringed isle of Wayalailai smack dab in the right ventricle of the Yasawa Islands (I prefer Isles). They sailed right past Nanuya Levu, or Turtle Island, where they didn’t film 1923’s first silent version of Blue Lagoon, but did film the second in 1949, the third with 14-year-old Brooke Shields in 1980, and 1991’s Return to the Blue Lagoon with Milla Jovovich who had turned 15 by the time principal photography began, disqualifying Jovovich from U.S. Senate Hearings which Shields had enjoyed.[2] The most interesting thing to come out of all this was the herpetologist who wasn’t looking at what I was looking at and spotted an iguana. The herpetologist, American John Gibbons, traveled to Turtle Island, studied the iguana, and published his findings in the journal Nature. Much as he anticipated, the Fiji crested iguana would have remained undiscovered if not for Brooke Shields, just like Christopher Atkins. It’s also endangered, just like Christopher Atkins’ career.

Cook even sailed past Castaway island, and Tom Hanks can act. Maybe it was too soon for Bligh whose cruelty on the Bounty led to his protegé’s mutiny on the Bounty.

On the morning of April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny that set Bligh and 18 men adrift in an open 23-foot skiff on the Pacific. In fact, they drifted right in front of me on Bligh’s Water. It was the first recorded passage of a European through Fiji, right through the heart of it in fact. Quartermaster John Norton had been stoned to death near Tonga, Fiji was renowned as The Cannibal Isles, and they sure as fuck weren’t going to stop again.

I watched their agonized ghosts drift by agonizingly slowly and thought, I could saunter down to my bure, lay down with my Lula, make sweet sweet love, then drink all the water I could ever possibly want, and be as safe as a Swiss vault the entire time.

Bligh and the Blighters still had 3,500 miles to go. Nowadays they could kick back in air-conditioned comfort and sip a daiquiri on a yacht courtesy of Bligh’s Luxury Cruise Lines. What a difference 200 years can make, huh? What I want to know is why we can’t all just get along. It sounds stupid simple, but no one’s ever answered it.

Why have the events I’ve so accurately caricatured captured the public imagination and inspired dozens of books and debates and fisticuffs and mysteries and movies and remakes and remakes of remakes like the 1962 production of “Mutiny on the Bounty” when Marlon Brando mutinied while portraying mutineer Fletcher Christian?[3] Christian twice had sailed in the merchant fleet with Bligh who promoted him quickly, tried to get him assigned as #2 man on the Tahitian cruise, and halfway through the 2-year-assignment to bring back breadfruit to feed Caribbean slaves, far from the eyes of the Navy Board, he promoted his.

From outward appearances, their mentor-apprenticeship was amiable. They were both ex-Royal Navy, and although he came from an aristocratic line, Fletcher’s father died when he was young, his mother was a prodigal wastrel who left three sons to fend for themselves, first beyond the reach of the debtor’s prison on the Isle of Man, and later at the Cockermouth free school (poor), which would’ve put him on more equal footing with Bligh than he was born to, although he came from a long military line. Christian was most likely not the dandy Brando portrayed who showed up in a horse-drawn carriage on his first day of work straight from a party in satin and silk with a woman on each arm. More likely though, there’s a grain of truth in that. Fucked up but no fool, Brando extrapolated something. Something that captured the essence of why we can’t all get along. Something about this part of the planet that hyper focuses your attention. Something happened in Tahiti. Tahiti is where it went weird for Brando and for Christian and Gauguin for that matter. The truth is, they both fell in love, the love of your dreams that wanders into the love of your nightmares.

The tropics do strange things to you. It's the heat, partly. For example, I’m trapped in suspended animation on a mountaintop on an island that's remote by Fijian standards. I see the ghosts of Bligh and his men float by, right through the main channel of the pounding heart of “The Cannibal Isles” as it was known after the Paradise and Paradise Lost ad campaigns ran their course in Europe, 200 years ago, and the vision is as real as the sweat that drips on this page. He floats past The Blue Lagoon which will shock the world by almost showing Brooke Shields’ breasts. Past Monuriki where Castaway will shock the world by showing it how much it can actually love a volleyball. Past hundreds of islands with thousands of men who salivate at the sight of them, which is actually worth being shocked by. Bligh and his men will row for their lives out into the vast wasteland of ocean that could’ve inspired “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

William Wales, Coleridge’s tutor, was on Cook's Second Voyage. They crossed the Antarctic Circle three times looking for Australia. Immense glaciers nearly collapsed on them and they narrowly escaped just in time to sit in a purgatorial fog. It could've been scurvy sailors’ anemia, bleeding gums, teeth falling out, wounds not healing. It could've been 1632’s enviably-titled tale of terror, “The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James.” In an attempt to find the Northwest Passage, they got stuck for a year and froze to death or went home to write their autobiography.

In 1726, Captain George Shelvocke’s “A Voyage Around the World by Way of the Great South Sea,” was all the rage. William Wordsworth, the second-best named writer, read it. On a 1797 walking tour of Somerset, he told Coleridge he ought to write a poem based on an incident in the book.

Simon Hatley, a spoiled, brooding haberdasher's boy with big dreams of booty, lost his shit in the rough seas rounding Cape Horn and shot an albatross that had been following them. In his defense he said, “It was black.” That worked for most white men at the time, but this crew hit the doldrums. The men, who were know-it-alls, said, I told you so, it’s bad luck to do something and have bad luck. Eventually, they got a break of wind because of Chile, allowing Hatley’s capture by the Spaniards he was trying to rob. Shelvocke rushed home to write his autobiography and left Hatley for the Inquisition to figure out. That was his second voyage. He was tortured for a long time and sent back to England, mad as a hatter’s son.

Hatley's first voyage had been eventful as well. After the Horn, they refueled at the uninhabited Juan Fernandez islands inhabited by a castaway who did not write an autobiography, but achieved literary fame nonetheless. Daniel Defoe based Robinson Crusoe on Alexander Selkirk who spent four years and four months marooned on that island and he was glad to get away from that fucking volleyball. His old buccaneering buddy William Dampier was on board too.

Dampier received a dishonorable mention in Gulliver’s Travels. In spite of a court martial for cruelty (he was acquitted of murder), dropping off 36 shipmates on Mindanao for dinner, and wrecking numerous ships, the gentleman pirate circled the globe three times, the first to do so, for Queen Mary II. He stayed in business by taking notes on trade routes and winds, and by taking credit for drawing plants and making maps. That’s how you get your name on a mountain, a town, a county, two peninsulas, an archipelago, a ridge (submerged), an island, two straits, a Navy ship, a road, stamps in three countries (one you plundered), and a planet (mid-sized). One of the drawings the gentleman from Somerset took credit for in his third of seven sensational autobiographies, “A Voyage to New Holland,” was a hearty, high-yield mulberry that was great for boat caulk, possibly Caribbean slaves, called breadfruit.

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

There goes Bligh, 18 blindingly white people floating by in an open boat right through the main artery of the hungry heart of Fiji. Directly in front of me in fact stretches the immense body of beautiful blue called Bligh Water we crossed randomly on Wise’ advice. Bligh probably thought he crossed it randomly too. Actually, his little crew crossed it quite purposefully, paddling their little hearts out down main street while a tsunami of demons bears down on them with a gourmet’s discriminating taste for the flesh of their enemies, their slaves, their poor, and their wives. Part of a professional warrior class, these specially-trained assassins paddle to the pound of drums, working dual stingray-spine tipped oars carved from entire trees to steer sacred 90-foot canoes with kids called birds of the sail impaled and lashed to 45-foot masts and sails stitched with shin needles. They’re thirsty in that way only blood can quench. They want to eat your soul. Their chief feeds on your life force. Their gods are fury and wrath and supreme among them is Degei, the ancient serpent signifying descent from the origin who creates day and night when he opens and closes his eyes, the seasons and rain and thunder and earthquakes when he awakes in his cave starving in the eternal circle of sleeping and eating.

He will eat his own children, or he will eat you. It makes no matter. So they will catch you, torture you, and sacrifice you to the first father for the most mana. They will beat the drums of death, dig the pit, and light the fire. It will dance with them in the ancient ritual of the theater of hell in the courtyard of the heavenly spirit house.

While you wait your turn, screams come from everywhere. Captives are dragged to the killing stone and forced onto their knees with their head in the worn-out groove in the middle. The priest chants and performs rites with a thighbone staff embedded with human teeth. The people chant and beat and dance lewd erotic rhythms. It builds and builds until the priest has a long, swollen-headed club raised above his head he pops the head off with. Brains are eaten straight out of the skull that will become a Kava cup. The blood frenzy heightens as heads, hands, and feet are cut off. Corpses are sexually abused. Skin is carefully sliced off with exquisite knives and the choicest cuts of the torso are placed on a platter and presented by the priest to Degei through his living emanation, the chief. It is taboo for either to touch your impure flesh, so they eat bokolo with bulutokos, rich, dark forks with intricately carved designs and three prongs resembling tentacles that lend them the overall appearance of squid (another god).

If you’re Bligh this might be a good time to reflect on the gravitas of feeding slavery with breadfruit. We’ve only scraped the surface of Fijian gods. Another high-level deity the enormous, chiseled agents of suffering and horrible endings of abomination worship is Dakuwaqa, a 50-foot shark that might be a Pleistocene predator drifting for the most part in the trenches halfway to the Earth’s core. In the Eighties, it nudged the boat of the ex-pat captain who’d run a main ferry route for decades. His crew gave it some kava, which pleased the god who drifted back to the depths. These waters are teeming with grey reef sharks, lemon sharks, white tips, black tips, sickle fin lemons, silver tips, massive bull and tiger sharks, and maybe best of all, hammerheads. They’re hard to relate to, as the sailors of the USS Indianapolis discovered.

They crisscrossed the Pacific in World War II engaged in too many battles to mention. On July 26, 1945, it dropped off half the world’s enriched uranium on Melanesian Toinian for Little Boy, which would obliterate Hiroshima ending the war in the Pacific. Four days later it was torpedoed by a Japanese sub and sank in 12 minutes. Three hundred went down with the ship, and 880 floated in the open ocean. The Navy never got the memo. At first they were nipped by a few sharks. It had been a bad year though. They were hungry. They got braver the longer the men were in the water. More blood. More sharks. More sharks. More blood. Dehydration. Hypothermia. Hypernatremia. Sodium spikes, brain cells shrink. Muscles twitch. Impaired judgment. Thirst. Spasms. Confusion. Seizures. Delirium. Hallucinations. Sharks. Suicide.

A pilot on a routine flight spotted them after three-and-a-half days. Top brass refused to assist, there was a war on. When word of the carnage spread every vessel in the region rushed to rescue the last 321 men alive and twitching.

In that light, Dakuwaqa is common sense. For a little kava and worshipful words, your enemy becomes your angel. You, your canoes, reefs, tribe, and island get the guardian of the waters with the most muscle and mana, sending the right message to your enemies – like children lashed to the mast or the backwards bastardization of the Swastika.

Clear blue water, quasi-cool breezes, children playing on the beach… Fiji is heaven. And by all accounts, hell. Missionaries, whalers, and others with behemoth karmic debt who lived to tell the tale told of bloodbaths straight out of Hieronymus Bosch. He and scores of other sick European fucks in the centuries leading up to these encounters must’ve been paid by the wound. They go big, and they always go for the jugular with an array of tortured and mutilated anatomy and sadistic atrocities sculpted onto the canvas with the evil genius of Satan Himself and the carving knife of Jack the Ripper. Art professors are still finding babies, fingers, and slit throats in these medieval masterpieces that would look right at home on the mantle of any spirit house. It’s as though the Fijian and Christian worlds were meant to collide. Christians killed and ate their god. What Fijian could argue with that? They both had serpents, albeit for very different reasons. And they both appreciated advanced annihilation. As noted, Fijians were legendary cannibals. Udreudre alone is said to have eaten somewhere between 900 and a thousand people. People who had lives, and families, and feelings. Conversely, certain factions of “Christians” killed 17 million people, including the cold, systematic murder of six million Jews. Stalin might’ve killed three times that. We’re a bloodthirsty species.

Right now, straight down, directly below me, is the most, serene, idyllic village with the nicest people you’d ever want to meet, and scenery so beautiful they shot three versions of The Blue Lagoon here even though they were essentially the same plot. It’s that pretty. So I can’t for the life of me see into its heart of darkness.

I can try to look at it in a historical context. Fijian oral history, depending on who you ask, harkens back to an ancestral mother from Thebes, South Africa father, and a chief named Degei or Lutunasobasoba, depending on who’s in power. A thousand years ago, this first chief delivered his people down Tanzania’s Rufiji River during the times of trouble at their place of origin, Lake Tanganyika, near Olduvai Gorge, the origin.

Ouroboros, the snake that eats its tail, the origin. Its circular shape, like the Earth, sun, and full moon is one of the oldest symbols and it can be found around the world. The snake sheds its skin, symbolizing rebirth, renewal of the seasons, spring rains that bring life, and death. The gods are fickle, as anyone who thinks a god will save them from a snakebite will tell you. Imagine what it must’ve been like for Grandmother Chimpanzee six million years ago living in trees with all those slithery serpents. Or what it was like for the first humans four million years ago when they fell out of the trees bald, unfanged, unclawed, unarmored, ridiculously vulnerable, and naked. A snack at birth. Super croc fat-rolls, the laughing stock of long-legged hyenas, saber-tooth tiger meat crackers.

There was another pesky matter. For millions of years we co-existed with other humans, genus Homo, and there were a lot of Homos. We fucked or fought our brothers and sisters just like humans of today. Likewise, there was safety in numbers, and your tribe’s alignment was the thin line between life and death. Gaining the strength of ferocious animals by eating them would make as much sense as anything else in a world with giants, dwarves, and animals we can’t even imagine. You’d pray for ancestors to watch over you. And that’s where gods, then god, then God comes in, in my opinion. The ones we make in our image at any rate. Your god, your tribe, how you’re defined, defined alliances and enemies that defined life or death. Especially after we stole fire from the gods about 300,000 years ago, accelerated brain growth, and became our own biggest predators.

That got a lot worse once the rains no longer came. An ice age 130,000 years ago locked up water and turned the lush cradle of humanity into a desert wasteland. No rain fell for thousands of years, and Homo sapiens, or “wise humans” as we say with apparent sincerity, was almost obliterated. Yet, the world and thousands, if not millions, of species were spared salvation.

People who’ve kicked more rocks than me called scientists estimate our ancestors got down to about 2,000, which is how many kids went to my high school. Maybe that’s the collective unconscious’s mythical remembrance of The Fall from the Garden of Eden. Probably not. There have been so many it’s impossible to tell which particular plant-based tragedy an undetectable inner entity could be referring to if it can be said to communicate at any perceivable volume in a cognitive code that’s not just plain gibberish much like this sentence.

One thing is absolutely certain, however, this was quite possibly the first big fight mom and dad had. Some actors in the video I saw staggered south, others made a horrid pretense of hobbling north. The San Bushmen who went south dodging civilization as best they could are the closest living relatives of 160,000 year old scientific Eve, since empirical Eve is undateable.

The rest of us are presumably descendants of the Hadza who went on to achieve significant notoriety as everybody else. About 60,000 years ago they hopped off the Horn of Africa to Arabia and/or Indonesia since the oceans were 300 feet lower and hit the beach in Australia about 45,000 years ago, inspiring a renaissance of terraformation and megafauna mass extinction, 23 out of 24, not too shabby, including a cute two-and-a-half ton wombat, colossal koalas, birds twice the size of ostriches, a 450 pound kangaroo, and a marsupial lion the size of a sabre-tooth tiger.

Other Hadza followed the Nile, settled Egypt, and migrated out of Africa 15,000 years ago toward the end of the last ice age.

There’s a lot we don’t know, most things in fact, but we guess we know that some migrated out of Africa to the Near East, India, and Far East, fucking and fighting, to the Malaysian Peninsula, where as the second migration, they fucked and fought and hunted and gathered and migrated south. They crossed the landmass that included the Philippines, Indonesia, and Melanesia whose inhabitants they fucked or fought. They chartered a catamaran to Australia, fucked or fought the first wave of Australians, making the family proud. The oceans rose, stranding a lot of people on islands, which is nice because now we know there were three-and-a-foot people and a flood of biblical proportions.

The Negritos of the Philippines and the Andaman Islanders 250 miles off the coast of Burma are relics of the first wave because of their relative isolation, along with a handful of Australian Aborigines. The Andamans are egalitarian, compassionate, respectful of their elders, have civilized conflict resolution, and the most recreational time of anybody on the planet. This is in keeping with what we know about hunter-gatherer societies, but we don’t know anything about hunter-gatherer societies. Men and women shared responsibilities in order to survive, they had to keep their numbers fairly low in order to survive, and they spread their risk around by subsisting on a wide variety of plants and animals. If something happened to one, they could find another. Not so with wheat. Nope, farmers are fucked. They wind up working longer, harder hours for elites in return for death, disease, war, poverty, and enslavement.

It’s not like anyone or anything had a choice. Everywhere we went, which was everywhere, we walked hand-in-hand with death. Fifty thousand years ago Solo man died out when we hit Java. Denisiva, discovered through a frozen Siberian finger, got wiped out by us except for a frozen Siberian finger. Neanderthals lived for two million years quite happily until we came along 12,000 years ago and exterminated them from the face of the planet except for the small percentage of DNA they were kind enough to contribute to Europeans. And they were bigger than us. Homo erectus? Cut down or consumed. Why? And why us?

Prometheus. According to Greek scientists, as well as amateur thinkers all over the world, someone, and it might as well be Prometheus, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. Can you imagine a dumber thing to do? Suddenly we could cook food and survive when we ate it. We lived better, healthier lives, burned down forests, burned things alive, and our brains grew bigger. The evidence is an immense leap forward in technology, expansion, and total world domination. We went from the brink of extinction to the brink of extinction in an infinitesimal wisp of cosmological time. How?

In the beginning, was the Word… and we never shut the fuck up. The apple – knowing, or Knowing (when it’s intuitive) – is an inverted parable of the origin of knowledge and wisdom. Notice it was given to Eve, not Adam, which means clay. It was given to the brighter of the two, Eve – the White Goddess -- the first, eternal god who manifested the self-regenerative energy of spirit, Earth, and nature, but suffered no fools (thus the double-sided ax as one of her symbols). The fools won. She was demoted, shamed, and destroyed – turned into Mary, Athena, Isis, and a thousand others who are with us in images and thoughts out of sight in plain view. She was made wife and mother and given the hearth – barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen in subjugation to the male principal energy of the desert tribes’ patriarchy.

Hence Knowledge of Good and Evil, if anything can be said to be good or evil of its own. The peer of the sheiks – or Magi, Sufi, or wisdom keepers, as the serpent wound around the Hermetic staff you see in every doctor’s office symbolizes – Shakespeare wrote, “for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” The mind is a powerful thing to waste. We don’t truly decide much with it. It’s emotion’s arithmetic, desire’s device, anger’s executioner, the slave of the subconscious. The serpents are trying to wind their way up your DNA to enlighten you and they’re having a hard time. Reality of the mind is the minotaur. Most of the men on the Indianapolis died of dehydration. Or was it sharks? Two narratives. What do you believe? Or, the more important question, why?

Truth is consensus of imagination. I heard Australia’s Aborigine’s, the first wave 50,000 years ago, didn’t distinguish between dreamtime and any other kind of time. They were the first people out of Africa, perhaps, dates are always getting pushed back, and it seems to me they lived a purely spiritual life. There was no separation between mind and myth, man and god, human spirit and any other kind of spirit. Some bolt of synaptic lightning snapped us out of the dream. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil the second wave brought 15,000 years ago or whatever they’re dating it at today, was rift asunder. One was two. Two was bored. One and one made three. Three fucked it up.

There’s a dreamy oceania, a dreamless dream, a primordial soup, the immaculate drifts on the perfect eternal sea beyond the grains of time, the flight of thoughts beyond the grasp of light and time. Perfect. Whole. Complete. Self-regenerative Spirit. Ourobouros. Peace. And. Fucking. Quiet.

Beyond the beyond, an infinitesimal ripple… a vague gnat whose wings build to a wave, phi or pi I couldn’t be sure until it triggered a tsunami of tenacious annoyance that sank the spell into the depths of the primordial ocean.

Lula.

Waving frantically up to the god on the mountaintop made suspiciously in a man’s image. The sea swelled and gave birth to my goddess my Venus, my Isis, my Ishtar on the frothing, foamy tide of Eros and Thanatos, those two cool new gods that kill me like Marduk killed Kingu, Cronus killed Uranus, and Odin killed Ymer and grow out of my head like Christ on the cross on Golgotha the Mount of Skulls, anew with a Brahmin brilliance young, virile, better looking, well hung. He gets his serpent cut off and she finds it and brings him back to life, and it goes on and on and on… the serpent ascends from the underworld through the cosmic planetary family tree and takes wing as a transcendent bird. Or albatross. Or Osiris. Olorun. Attis. Adonis. Gilgamesh. Degei. Naga. Ndendegei. Nesaru. Nocuma. Kokomaht. Quetzalcoatl. Con Tiqui. Christ. Almighty.

Who divinely hand down different universal principles to pharaohs and Thomas Jefferson, King Kamehameha and Captain Cook, Hammurabi and Mohammed, cannibals and Christians. That’s the beauty of humanity, beauty is truth, and truth beauty. “That is all Ye know on Earth, and all Ye need to know,” Keats said. Faulkner replied, “If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” Writers of course are the biggest cannibals of all. Plato, a phenomenal writer I admire, admired the Ourobourous. The Fijians, like the Serpent Mound builders of America and Rainbow Serpent of Aborigines, honored the Ourobourous as “the Offspring of the origin,” or Degei, Ndendegei, or Latunasobasoba, depending on your denomination, depending on your wave of migration. The oldest known mythical symbol, Plato admired the first perfect living thing for its efficient design. He didn’t get its symbolic subtleties, and I love Plato, studied philosophy for six-and-a-half years. Degei is the serpent of wisdom emerging from the darkness to enlighten Home sapiens, and an ancient trail its traveled because it needs nothing other than itself to survive. Always reborn of its own regenerative spirit, the cycle, the wheel, like the Swiss-clock universe, turns for eternity.

November 26

The next morning proved a difficult goodbye. I loved the resort, the villagers, our friends. It frayed my heartstrings waving goodbye from the boat. As they shrank into the distance, the reality that I’d never ever see them again hit me. I got watery-eyed and forced myself to tear away from them. As I turned to look forward, I knew they’d only ever live as memories for me forever. The wind blew away the streaks on my cheeks and everything else. The present became the past, the present was the future, and the present ripped apart leaving a vacuous aftermath with nothing more tangible than the ethereal memories that would shrink and distort, grow and transform, like a dream about a snake that changes every time you think about it, showing you different things with each remembrance, real and unreal.

As we boarded the flight, the captain said a cyclone was headed for Tahiti. We might spend the night in Tonga, which was fine by me. I had a headful of drowse.

Rarotonga

On landing I was pleasantly surprised to find Rarotonga is in the Cook Islands, and I’m a huge Cook fan. On the other hand, the hurricane had been downgraded to a cyclone, but on the other hand, the cyclone hit Papeete, our destination, if such a thing can be said to exist, so we were welcomed to Rarotonga because the plane was not leaving. Air New Zealand, being the upstanding company that it is, took us in an air-conditioned shuttle bus to the Edgewater Resort, room $200 (free) or $345 with ocean view (you can pay the difference). The bellhop said there would be dancing. The Edgewater was the kind of place that fat, stuffy Euroweenies and Ozwalds go to complain about food. The buffet, included, consisted of a vast spread of cole slaw, fish, wahoo, pork, chicken, sauces, and desserts the Europeans complained about while doing the backstroke in. After Fijian malnutrition, I would’ve welcomed bakola, but this was beyond my wildest dreams.

If Don Ho lived in Rarotonga he’d be playing The Edgewater. It had a three-star motel elegance, lit pool, and the kind of clientele that said, “Hey Bob, good to see ya, ya look great!” We piled a couple of plates high, even though I was still full from the Fijian Big Mac Sunny the taxi driver had been kind enough to drive thru (one never drives through, that’s heretical in the eyes of the fast), plus I was still stuffed from the seafood pasta on Air NZ, the Greatest Airline in the World.

The host, a real cheese dealer, told us there was no room for tonight’s show – it was a packed house. We seated ourselves, which as it turns out, is not all that hard. I’ve got to give it to him though, that host was a serious multi-tasker, he hopped right up on stage after not seating us and said, “Hello ladies and gentlemen! Aloha. Kia orana. Say it with me, kia orana! I can’t hear you! Kia orana! That means, hello, and welcome. Do we have anyone from Germany?” No one raised their hand. “Okay, any Italians?” No takers. “Any French?” Nope. “Hungarians?” No. “Any honeymooners?” Two awkward couples raised their hands. He made them stand up for applause. “You look tired,” he said. “Anybody celebrating a divorce?”

He announced the divorcees were getting married and he sang them a little poly-amorous ditty. Then the drummers struck it up and the girls shimmied out and shook hula skirts and coconut bras and Lula said they made her want to put a hand in my lap. Erotic these slow grinding hips then bam! To the drum bam bam! Old guys having heart attacks. Bam bam! Man dancers mance, not so interesting, no, but the drums bam bam bam hypnotize and the sea casts its spells and their hips mesmerize while their eyes tell us lies and they sway in the wind so sweet coffee skin those bellies so soft so thin so… O… O… O… no… yes.

November 27

Thanksgiving. I think it’s Thanksgiving. Again today. I can’t be sure. No one can. We crossed the International Date Line. Logic has no power here. Einstein would be enfeebled in this place. Calculus can’t even help us now. We’re so far beyond any concept of the space-time continuum the space-time discontinuum has lost all meaning. You can’t just think your way out of that shitbox. On the bright side, yesterday’s eradicated from history.

Moorea is more beautiful than you can probably imagine. I’m sitting on a pier on Cook’s Bay nine miles and a million across the Sea of the Moon from French Polynesia’s main island, Tahiti. Every single proper noun in that last sentence is proper, and beautiful, but one. I don’t know if he was the one who named it after himself, but it was love at first sight for him too. He wrote, “At 6 a.m. saw King George's Island[4] extending from West by South 1/2 South to West by North 1/2 North. It appeared very high and Mountainous. Wind variable; course North 66 degrees West; distance 54 miles; latitude 17 degrees 38 minutes South, longitude 148 degrees 39 minutes West; Osnaburg Island East 1/2 South, 13 leagues.”

What you’re hearing is the sound of a man imprinting the signature of his soul on the page in blood, the heat of a thousand suns burning in his infernal heart, and Cook’s leagues and latitudes make Coleridge and his creepy crawly things look a moron. It’s a damn good thing he was a stealthy navigator because he sure as hell was a lousy fucking poet. “I wonder what that swaggering little brogadiccio Cook is cooking up now,” a teacher of his at Oddcock never said.

The French didn’t exactly invent Tahiti and they weren’t even close to the first intruders, so I don’t know why they have it in the first place or in the second have gotten away with keeping it this long. It’s not like they have an exemplary record of running countries.*

The bay is surrounded by immense volcanic, verdant cliffs of the steepest magnitude shooting straight up out of the dark depths where the kraken lays in wait for submarines at about 33,000 feet to the highest roof beams of the sky where Oro watches over everyone.

The sea is every shade of green, and now that the cyclone has moved on to greener pastures the clouds are breaking up and the sun beats down. You can hike to waterfalls, feed sharks, play with dolphins, picnic on idyllic atolls, and watch dancing while enjoying a feast. Even the people are friendly, and this is a French country. You can talk shit about people when you claim an esoteric association with them. I’m descended from the Savoy Gorbetts and/or Gorbets, rhymed with sorbet, because you were definitely wondering, I could tell it was eating you alive. The reason I can insult the French for their excessive use of rude is another matter altogether. I’ve been there. The only drawback as far as I can see to “French Polynesia” is that it’s the second most expensive country in the world. Quel bullshit.

No wonder Gauguin was less than impressed.

Low clouds hung heavy like old curtains when we arrived in Papeete and took off again and landed again 10 minutes later on Moorea. They loomed like a wet gray quilt while we looked at Chez Nelson and Joisine’s Backpacker Paradise. She had a shithole available for $25, and in the morning a better shithole right on the beach for $30. Lula looked anything but excited, and Hotel Hibiscus elicited a similar response with a wilted, dingy bungalow for $100/night. The French lady had a Grotesque Planet Guide that Lula found a place of which we jotted down the number for. We continued down the road on foot, totally degrading, and all the phones required cards – quel bullshit classique. We wandered into the Eurocar rental shop. When Lula told Peter not Pierre we needed a place to stay and had to get there piéd a terre, Peter not Pierre said, “Ugh! Wait a minute! I’m busy.”

We did so cheerfully, and he made the call eventualment.

“I got you a room at Cook’s Bay Resort for the rack rate of $45/night. My friend Greg’s the owner and I live two doors down.”

Saint Peter not Pierre even gave us a ride. He left Ontario, near Toronto, nearly 20 years ago, which finally answers the ancient Peter not Pierre riddle. In 1987 he sold his yacht to cultivate black pearls, the world’s rarest, only coming from French Polynesia, some 650 km north of Moorea, in the middle of nowhere on tiny atolls where the conditions were just calm and supple enough for the little oysters who were cultivated from polyps, were agitated, harvested, and thrown to the chickens and pigs in honor of their service and gratitude for the lives they sacrificed because the last thing a worker would eat was an oyster. They prefer cans of Deviled Ham contrary to the Missionary’s position. A form of spite so subtle it’s sublime. The rich started stopping coming here more and less often, respectively, the market for black pearls “opened up” according to optimists, and less often the elite of our kind dropped 30 grand on a necklace whimsically. That was de rigueur when these were The Society Isles and Society made this their exclusive retreat. And priced everyone out along the way. Quel bullshit. Now they go somewhere far more expensive, a sign of advanced civilization, making it difficult to garner the 10 grand you need, minimum, a month, to keep afloat comfortably.

“Funny the turns life will take,” Peter said. He hated French in school, saw its uselessness, now speaks it fluently, has a French passport, and kids who speak it. That is funny. Funny bullshit.

Cook’s Bay Resort is a second-rate Holiday Inn – a faux colonial front and a clientele that stirs off the lawn chairs long enough to feed. I feel sorry for people like J.J., his sister, and mother from Sacramento who were sold a dream, saved for ages, came all this way, sat through the cyclone, spent $94 at the supermarché on bier and Les Pringles, cut his leg on coral feeding sharks, and his mother broke her arm at the waterfall. Quel bullshit.

The food isn’t so good, like you heard it was the Cordon Bleu but they gave you Captain D’s, the room’s okay, not great, and it’s Tahiti – the land of his dream’s dreams. It could be more. It should be more. It should be Moorea®. He was just glad his mother paid for it. I thought that was a very touching sentiment and he got what he deserved.

We, on the other hand, were just glad Visa was paying for it. I do like Tahiti – I was prepared not to, dug in determined entrenched vapor locked in a deep top secret underground vault made of kryptonite, but I do. I like the sheer cliffs, volcanic stalactites, the crystal water. I’ve enjoyed swimming in the pool all day, laying under this palm tree, reading “The House of the Spirits.” Lula doesn’t feel good, she hasn’t in days. Weeks. Months. She can barely find enough food to keep her alive. She pulls the dough out of the pizza, the center out of the baguette, takes an odd bite of egg.

She had a dream last night that a friend came in the room with another guy she knew was dangerous. In the dream, the windows and doors were locked. She wanted to warn her friend, but the psycho rampaged first. By the time she found me he’d smashed my knee. Then he turned on her. Her friend realized what was happening and helped out. He was a little slow on the uptake. There was a trial and she was under watch by the authorities. They could drug test her whenever they wanted. She was the one on trial. His cat had kittens.

“What does that mean?”

“I think it’s obvious,” I said. “Cats have kittens.”

Pools have deep ends and shallow ends.

Lula’s instincts told us to skip the $35 feast/dancing package and call Alfredo for a free ride to his restaurant. The Queen of Tahiti picked us up in a red 4-wheel Jeep on steroids, a floral dress, and badass afro, and delivered us out of the Land of the Pharaohs unto the Bistro of the Alfredo. He welcomed us with massive open arms. He showed us to a table by the water. Its alignment could not have arisen by chance. It faced bungalows built on stilts in an arc across incorporeal luminescence to sell postcards, while at the exact same moment in time proffered the only occasional opportunity to witness first hand the movement of a Population I yellow dwarf star with relatively large amounts of heavy elements indicating ancestral supernovae that fused the lighter elements of a universe in the blush of youth. But that’s not all. This average, middle-aged dwarf has a burning heart of pure hydrogen love fusion. If 26999540.33F isn’t hot, I don’t know what is. You may look at him and go, yeah, yellow dwarf, go it. But there’s more to this little guy than meets the eye. He may not look like much, but he’s a serious mover and shaker, around the galaxy, at 514,495.347173 miles per hour. It’s all his 9 8 lady friends can do to keep up with him. In fact, there he goes, headed for the horizon of a terrestrial world discovered by Nicky Copernicus who was Polish so fuck all your Polish jokes. Its primates call it torpaq, lur, ard, tany, whatever the fuck. You can see why it’s densest planet in the solar system. Five mass extinctions and another one on in the oven. All those mouths to feed. Some people never learn. All. Except the aesthetic genius who placed this plastic table here. And lit those Tiki lamps. Now that’s classy. And designed in way that implies that it must have had a designer. Not the densest spoon in the drawer either, a very, extremely intelligent designer.

Alfonso embarque aperitifs avec un bouteille de vin rouge et Salad Peasant de le Fromage Bleu. C’est délicieux! For the main! Shrimp â Scampí pour Le Lula, et pour monsieur, Salmón des Dieu Deux. Magnifique! Après? Crème a la Caramèl. Pas de bullshit! Simplement parfait, mais non? I love it here, I get to speak French, feel sophisticated, and the bill only came to 26999540.33514,495.347173. Not bad.

The goddess gave us a ride, and I have to say, she’s the real deal. She even came around and opened my door for me. The very definition of an English gentleman.

As soon as locked the door to keep the cats out I stripped off all Lula’s clothes and made mad passionate furious love to her and with her and at her and towards her. But I’d set it up by pre-positioning beforehand, which she didn’t object to, even complemented me on, so I thought it was only nature to slip into a comfortable post-position afterward. I hope she doesn’t get annoyed with me over the years because I’m horny all the time. She’s the Hina to my Tuna, the Nakauvadra to my Ndendegei, the te papa fenua to my te tumu nui o te fenua, the object of my affectation, the ideal complement for and to my complement till death do us part afterlife notwithstanding. She’s my idea of love.

"INTO IT WERE THROWN THE BONES OF THE VICTIMS AFTER THE FEAST WAS OVER""Back of the kitchen was the 'larder,' a round, deep hole where the 'long-pig' was kept until ready for the oven. Directly over the mouth of this hole, and about forty feet above… — "INTO IT WERE THROWN THE BONES OF THE VICTIMS AFTER THE FEAST WAS OVER"
"Back of the kitchen was the 'larder,' a round, deep hole where the 'long-pig' was kept until ready for the oven. Directly over the mouth of this hole, and about forty feet above it, was the horizontally projecting limb of the sacred banyan, the only tree, by the way, which was permitted to grow within the walls. Over this limb hung a stout rope braided of the fibrous bark of the hau tree. When the call for more meat came from the 'kitchen,' the noosed end of this rope was lowered over the head of the victim next in order, and he was pushed over the brink of the hole, the fall usually breaking his neck. Dismemberment, according to prescribed rules, followed, the choice bits, such as the hands and eyes and ears, being laid aside for the chiefs."
IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES
THE ACCOUNT OF A FOURTEEN THOUSAND MILE YACHTING CRUISE TO THE HAWAIIS, MARQUESAS, SOCIETIES, SAMOAS AND FIJIS
BY
LEWIS R. FREEMAN, 1920

November 28

Today we’re well fed, laying on clean sheets, naked, intertwined, in love, in a cool new bungalow (not on stilts, those are expensive, to the tune of some infinitely exponential algorithm), under a ceiling fan talking about good books. They had a copy of Generation of Swine in the library, or as I like to say, shelf. Hunter covered his ass for some trespass in Hawaii, whose ancestors originated in Fiji, by invoking diplomatic immunity granted by the divine decree of Lono, the god they thought Cook was... when they ate him. Lesson there: don’t be a god. They’ll crucify you. They always have to crucify somebody. Ask Cain. He carried “the mark” for slaying Abel. The mark, despite a lack evidence so glaring it would blind a New Jersey judge, was the justification most frequently used for slavery. Genocide. Crimes against humanity. These practices obviously aren’t as bad as cannibalism, which while practiced, was a wildly inflated smear campaign to undermine the dignity and rights of the people that European consumers were hungry to convert, bequeath Syphilis, use for target practice, devour every other way, eradicate from the face of the Earth, and wipe out every trace of existence except what fit neatly on a postcard. But maybe that’s just how I see it.

It’s why Le Bateaux is the best restaurant on the island. It floats because it’s a boat moored on the end of the pier by our bungalow. Florian the Frenchman who runs the place and always wears a sailor cap because he wouldn’t want you to forget it’s a boat, and the Polynesian waitress who’s as unfathomable as Brando said, served us an endive salad with Roquefort cheese and an olive vinaigrette. I had mussels in a white wine sauce and a beer they poured into a glass in the shape of a cowboy boot. I don’t know why that made me some damn happy. Lula’s entrée consisted of crab soup with a hollandaise sauce you spread on toasted baguette rounds rubbed with raw garlic cloves covered in mozzarella. It’s beyond food. It’s The Best Food I Ever Ate in My Entire Life. The view is the coral reef half a mile offshore where the color changes to the lightest brightest blue and the waves break around the entire circumference of Moorea, as well as the mountains behind our bungalow that are so tall their peaks are shrouded in clouds. These are what make it Edenic.

Our bungalow has hard wood floors, high ceiling, woven walls, rattan furniture, a kitchenette, lawn, beach, masks and snorkels, an outrigger canoe, a grassy lawn with plenty of lawn chairs, and a bouquet of fresh birds of paradise on the dining table.

It was worth hitching a ride in the back of a pickup to make the ferry, learning on the other side that Le Truck wasn’t leaving for two hours, waiting for no Le Truck, and renting a Fiat Panda for $100 from Saint Peter not Pierre to discover this place on the far side of the island.

I look out at the ocean and over at my girl whose idea it was to come here, the most beautiful place on Earth, and know so deep in my heart that I am the luckiest man on the planet. Fuck money. Shit’s all made up anyway, right? Right?

A sweet sail was had by Lula and me in the outrigger. The French guys next door started to pile fishing rods in it when I stepped out and said we have the paddles, we’re going out, here’s my backpack, and the curly little guy didn’t understand because he didn’t speak English. His older friend, an obvious liar and moustacher, said the bateaux was for people staying in their room.

“No,” I said, “it’s for people staying in our room.”

The boss had gone to get the paddles for us from their room because they’d been keeping them from the other guests.

“We’re embarking on a sunset cruise. We’re leaving now.”

“Okay,” he relented and turned and walked back in his bungalow to prepare his anus for his friend.

We set sail, I, the motor, Lula the Navigator. We did well in the strong wind and mostly went where we wanted. The sun drifted away and the sheer emerald cliffs held clouds in their laps that the sun painted pink. It was as if a conductor and a watercolorist had synchronized their arts for us alone. We uncorked the Merlot and poured a glass and drank to us, we, who did it. You have to make it happen, and that’s all it is – to see those clouds covered in pink and the coral alive in tiger-striped fish. The time will pass no matter what you do – the minutes and moments that could be so beautiful, will be gone, and you will or won’t be comforted by your memories if you will or you won’t live your life.

November 29

I awoke at 7 a.m. and tried not to wake up Lula but couldn’t help opening the drapes to look out at that pale blue ocean – after the ocean pounds the ring reef – a quarter mile out – a thunder that relaxes you and carries you through a night of tranquil reassured dreams – and caresses the beach slowly, thoughtfully, until its work is done, and spent, returns to the sea. I returned to Lula. And I knew why Gauguin came here. And why Brando came here. They dreamed about it. They read everything they could about it. They did whatever they had to do get here. And it exceeded their expectations in more ways than they could count. They both fell in love, with the islands, the women, they found themselves, and lived lives that transcended anything else the rest of the world had to offer. But it couldn’t protect them from tragedy. The rest of the world was still out there. And the rest of the world was still in them. They found some peace though. That was the tone for the last day.

I plowed the Panda across the unprepared island to a magasin – a little store – and we bought yoghurt, coffee, and sweet condensed milk for breakfast and sat on the porch drinking it when a cat came up. She was going to be, or was, a momma, judging by her swollen nipples. We gave her two spoonfuls of condensed milk she considered a tad sweet, but was well mannered and purred graciously anyway and walked back and forth so we could take turns experiencing the smoothness of her back as she pressed it against our hands. A cat. Had kittens. What man was slow on the uptake? It would be years before I knew who he was and even more years to discover his identity.

I went snorkeling off the pier by Le Bateaux. The fish watched me and I was surprised by the amount of tiger fish, angelfish, and black somethings that freaked me out when I realized they were circling me and watching me. Made me a little nervous. I topped off that paranoia quite nicely by swimming out far from the pier and imagining from the blurry blue depths the rise of a black-tipped reef shark. They fed not far away. Jaws gave me the gift of that particular fear when I was six or seven. I was scared to swim alone for years, even in pools. Maybe I was just scared to be alone. Or alone with myself. It was my fear, I created it, even if it came from the world. I took it with me everywhere I went, whether it was a shark or some other thing I demonized. I tried thinking of something else, but that only made the gravity stronger and pulled in Dakuwaqa and hammerheads and the sailors of the Indianapolis. Figuring I was broadcasting electrical currents of fear, I swam fairly quickly back to the pier, ashamed. If someone were with me I wouldn’t have been scared, because they could’ve been eaten while I swam for help.

We had another few hours so I wandered the grounds taking pictures of the koi ponds with blossoming lily pads, the haloed peaks, a rainbow in the hills, and the wide swath of sea. I read some and soon we packed up, loaded the Panda, and went to what I assumed was Le Bateaux because there was this guy wearing a sailor cap.

Lula wasn’t feeling good, her stomach hurt for the third day in a row, and there wasn’t much on the menu of the best restaurant in the world that ignited her salivary gland. She chose the salmon ravioli, while I had the crab soup, which I think I can’t stress enough, is The Best Food I Ever Ate in My Life. Le Bateaux rocked which wasn’t good for Lula, but her salmon ravioli was pretty fucking good for igniting my glands.

Florin, who I learned was from Switzerland and not my compatriot, said the boat used to be the ferry between Papeete and Moorea. Eric, majority owner, bought it in 1986, sealed it with cement, and added the top deck. It launched in 1986, sank in ‘87. Florin got off 20 minutes before it sank. After a month they inflated air bags and pulled it up, the inspectors found it had been sunk from the inside. A plumber had come by the day it sank and cranked up the water pressure of the fresh water line from the onshore tank. The line couldn’t hold. The insurance company said they wouldn’t pay for it because the water didn’t come from outside. Eric made such a stink about it they got some money. Florin said it hadn’t come with instructions. I told him that was something I was familiar with as well.

We said goodbye as you do over and over in life and drove off excited to absorb expanses from on high. It rained on the windy road up the side of Mount Rotui and turned it into a deathtrap. The Panda handled pretty well, but Lula was turning green. I got to Belvedere Point before she puked, but the “spectacular views of Opunohu Bay” were sabotaged by that darned rascal locals call “steady rain.” I took some pictures in the mist, experienced a little awe, and descended the mysterious mountain.

Maui the Dolphin turned out to be the real high point of the day. We got in the water and Justin the trainer allowed us to hold him. He kissed Lula on the lips and looked lovingly deep into her eyes – his head between her breasts – while they took a picture. She was almost as giddy as a girl at an early Beatles show. We felt his heart beat, still alive, he smiled and showed us all 94 teeth, looked us in the eye, and rolled over on his back to have his belly rubbed, all the while Justin saying, “You’re the man, Maui! You’re the man!” And feeding him fish. He did seem too oppressed to me.

He was so gentle and smooth and smart and good-natured, pure love. It’s one of the most joyful wrong things you can do. He sped off and leaped in the air and swam back at 90 miles an hour and stopped inches from me. I tried catching flies with my mouth hanging open.

“Good brakes, eh?” Justin said.

Then it was over, he waved goodbye, and he was the one leaving us with two friends in tow. They raced and flipped and splashed like teenagers in a gilded cage. Waiting for our pictures, we talked to a guy on his honeymoon with a mock Roman swimsuit and his wife who were on an 18-day tour of Beverly Hills, Tahiti, Vegas, and wine country. Afterward, I turned to Lula and said, “He already hates her.”

“Let’s never be like that, okay?”

“Okay.”

After we picked up our picture of Maui hitting on my lady they were still trying to coerce the other two back with fish. Maui’s charisma was a force to be reckoned with. Lula couldn’t take her eyes off him, but the photo lab lady told us we had half an hour to catch the last ferry or we’d have to spend the night and miss our 3 a.m. flight.

I passed every car the Panda descended on with its sleek aerodynamics and mechanical bravado, so macho it only needed one wiper. It was actually more of a pocket panda. I’d figured out on dead man’s curve that I had to take my shoes off or they’d push two maybe three pedals. It was raining lightly which gave me concern until I saw the rainbow on Opunhow Bay – the massivest I’ve ever seen. An optical illusion made it look like it was coming right in the window, then another appeared – a double rainbow.

“That’s a good sign,” I said to Lula, still riding the dolphin.

At the port, I unloaded the packs while she paid the Europcar lady who overcharged us a lot. She was the last one on the ferry as I stood on the plank so they couldn’t pull away without her. As soon as she hopped on it lurching like a bad boat on rough seas. Lula turned blue. We crossed the Moon of the Sea and half an hour later we pulled in and walked around Papeete looking for a phone, a market, Le Truck. Lula was hungry and dizzy but found a phone and called Europcar.

“I was there earlier,” she said, “No, I’m not there, I’m in Papeete. You overcharged me, damn!” She ran out of money and called back. “Yes, I just called. No, I was there earlier. Goddamnit! Fuck!”

I’d started talking to the girl from New Zealand I’d seen on the flight from Fiji. “Are you walking to the airport,” she asked. Lula stomped off in a frustrated rage. I followed her.

“I don’t know,” I said to the girl, who tagged along until it was fairly obvious my fiancé was ill humored at the moment.

“I don’t want some greasy food that’ll make me sicker,” Lula said.

I told her I saw a place in the guidebook that probably had AC – Hotel Shogun – and she wearily pressed on until she broke down in tears saying every time she tried to do something it couldn’t get done and she was so frustrated and angry and couldn’t stand it anymore. Flushed and upset, she looked so sad and over-weary. I wanted to fix everything and make it alright for her but until we sat down at a restaurant there wasn’t much I could do.

“I understand,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’ll be over soon. We’ll be home.”

We walked on once she calmed down and found an outdoor café called Le Retro where a surly waitress brought menus. Lula wanted a sandwich without sprouts or something to that effect and the lady said no. She wanted a sandwich with something else added, sprouts or something to that effect. She said no. Lula asked again. She had the determination of a bull when she wanted something but she’d been badly gored in the gut by strange and terrible parasites.

“No,” she said. “You can’t have that.”

Lula relented and ordered something else. I ordered and went to the bathroom for a change of scenery. It wasn’t much better. I washed my hands and face and looked myself in the eye. I should’ve taken better care of her. She’d been for sick so long. Before the trip I’d believed the adage that if you could travel with someone you should marry them. It never occurred to me what absolutist bullshit that was. The truth rarely lies at the extremes driven beyond the invisible axman’s false dichotomy. Maybe you should marry someone because you love each other, even if it’s hard, especially if it’s hard. Because marriage is hard.

When I sat down, she said, “I love you,” as she does sometimes when she’s nervous or as an apology or to fill the awkward air or because she does and says so.

“I love you too,” I said. The food came and she tore into hers. I ate some fries and left the chicken sandwich alone.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Enh. Just a habit.”

“You know you don’t have to make everything alright.”

“It’s my job, I’m the knight in shining armor.”

She smiled and reached across the table and held my hand. I loved her soft hand in mine, the white inside of her wrist that always seemed like such a delicate passage for so much life, and the scars on her freckled arm she got when she was seven chasing a boy. She thought the glass door was open. Blood spurted everywhere, all over the inside of the big black, but Katy said Tracey was nonplussed. She’s great when it’s awful, and bad when it’s good.

“We’re almost home,” I said. “Will you go home with me?”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m ready so to go home.”

We kissed, went to the airport, and checked in. The guy in front of us couldn’t believe he wasn’t sitting with his wife. We weren’t either. With his wife, or together. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, as intertwined as we were, not having spent more than a few hours apart in 69 days. As we walked off to find a corner to not be able to sleep for six hours Lula said, “I wonder what potato truck that guy fell off?”

I laughed. She was a battle hardened road warrior, burnished into fine, hard steel by the ring of fire. Through sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, she had kept going no matter what, putting one flip in front of the other flop, and no matter the misery or hardship, in the face of adversity, she could look it squarely in the eye, see into its soul, and help it, fix it, laugh, or cry, feel with it, or roll with it. She never looked away. I needed someone who would never look away. I wore the masks I knew would fall away in time. I was a beast. A cannibal. Slow on the uptake, dangerous. I knew I could only be saved through grace, that comes from forgiveness, born from the suffering that burns away the masks that ego uses to hide scared, insecure little boys and big, wounded, angry beasts. Once the truth is revealed, the love that loves to love, offers the twins of the same soul the sacrament of unconditional love. Through our journey I learned that Lula would me unconditionally. And I would need it. Or I would die? In return, I would offer it to her. And through our union, forged in the fire of suffering where everything would be stripped away, sculpted in the joys of those ineffable moments when the sunset was sublime, when we vowed to love each other till death do us part, when our love-struck lightning and the strands of our DNA intertwined into the new life of our baby girl, we would each find meaning, purpose, and grace. We’d discover that the real love doesn’t set in for 30 years, and you don’t get there unless you suffer, shatter, let go, and let yourself die over and over to grow more than you could ever have possibly imagining when you got down on one knee, naked, that afternoon in L.A. so many years ago. But you’ll do it. All of it. More. And less. Better. Worse. You wouldn’t have gotten married if you knew that day what marriage meant. You’ll descend to the depths, get cruel, destroy the spirit of the ones who love you, die inside, and nearly outside. The only thing that will save you is the thin tether of unconditional love that transcends judgment, forgives, and graces babe and beast alike. The word and the water, my wife and my daughter, saved my soul, life, sanity, and our holy trinity. Nothing really matters much to me, but what does matter, matters a lot. My family means more to me than anything in the world.

My family tree goes back to fermented fruit of the knowledge of good and fucked up. The day my parents called me from playing and told me out of the blue they were getting divorced ripped my universe in half. Then it got worse. I wrote my life narrative in three acts: Paradise, the Fall, After the Fall. I vowed that wouldn’t be the story of my kid’s life. But it happened. Temptation, the dark twin triumphed, descent into the underworld, crucifixion, death. The father was resurrected by the mother. The child is the savior. The child is life. The child is all.

Nobody can tell you the right path for you. Everyone will try. Fuck them. As every timeless voice has whispered on the winds of eons, when we get quiet, silent, and listen closely, we can navigate by the north star of instinct and the compass of conscience.

I knew I loved Lula. That was all that mattered. We’d have good times and great times, bad times and considerable, sustained suffering, but through the journey, I knew we would love each other through it all. No matter what. And laugh. Cry. Lie. Want to die. Survive, and thrive. Having kids is just like life, only a million times more intense because you’re heart is outside your body running around in the world. It’s a big, crazy world that doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. I don’t care who you are, or where you live.

Kids raced around us while tried to sleep in the corner of a distant stinky airport, delirious, sick, and exhausted. Tiny crabs attacked us. We had to laugh because it was all just so fucking absurd. We didn’t know it then, but our world would revolve on the axis of unconditional love, but laughter would be the force that kept it spinning. For as long as we breathed. Maybe beyond that.

Eight hours later, as we descended over an ocean where wooly sheep clouds grazed, I wondered what awaited us in the city of shattered angels. Whatever it was, fame, fortune, failure, paradise, purgatory, hell, or most likely something in between where the truth really lives, we had a wedding to plan. A family to start. A new life to begin, together, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer and for much poorer.

But that is another story...

Notes

[1] I’m just saying this is about how big the world is +/- 25%.

[2] Shields was exonerated.

[3] Between Marlon and Brando, there’s so much meat on the bone I’ll circle back around for him later.

[4] Tahiti.